Nike is an American corporation that designs, develops, manufactures and sells footwear, accessories, apparel, equipment, and services across the world.  It is the largest supplier of clothing and athletic shoes globally. In the shoe industry, it is one of the major manufacturers of sports equipment. In the last five years, there is a tendency in the athletic footwear industry to increase their success in manufacturing and exporting shoes. In 2017, the value of the global athletic industry was at USD 64.30 billion. The industry is expected to expand at a CAGR of 5.0% between 2018 and 2025 (Allen, 2013). The key reason for this rise is the growing enthusiasm of consumers. There has been an increase in awareness regarding the benefits of sports and fitness activities to the overall health of a consumer. Many young people worldwide are getting keen on embracing a healthy lifestyle and are therefore interested in participating in sports and other sports-related activities. Consumers have realized that sports can improve their health and reduce the effects and risks of chronic disorders such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Other factors that have led to this development are the increase in retail e-commerce globally and the increasing levels of disposable income of consumers.  People have realized that proper shoes for sporting activities can reduce leg injuries, muscle pain, hip pain, knee pain, and back pain. This has also boosted the industry (Green, 2015).

Nikes marketing strategy include; differentiated offering, using various marketing communications mix, celebrity marketing, positioning, segmentation and targeting of the brand and organizing and conducting sports events such as marathons. These strategies have placed Nike at the top of the footwear industry. There are various pros, cons, and risks of their primary strategy.

As we have seen earlier, Nike uses celebrity marketing as its core marketing strategy. It means that it believes in the pyramid of influence to create its brand image. The advantage of a repeatable model is that it allows the company to improve their skills and systemize the processes (Sichol, 2019). Nike has a particular audience, that is, athletes, enthusiasts of sports and very brand conscious target market. This makes it easy for the marketing team to create ad campaigns that target their audience. The main con is that Nike mainly focuses on high products that use cutting edge technology. Therefore the prices are very competitive. This does not communicate to the lower class and the middle-class society.  There are risk factors to these strategies such as the high competition and the influence of the spokesperson. The changing demand and consumer choices pose a risk to the strategies.

The main competitors of Nike are Adidas, Puma and new balance. The main advantage of Adidas is that it is focusing on more on basketball running shoes and stylish everyday shoes. This strategy expands its target market. Adidas also has a technologically superior product. New balance is even posing a market challenge to Nike. One of the advantages of new balance shoes is that their shoes fit a wide variety of shoes.

From the observation and research above, it be would recommended that Nike’s competitors should identify the weaknesses of Nike and work to improve their quality with cutting edge technologies.

References

Allen, F. J. (2013). Shoe industry. New York: Rarebooksclub Com.

Green, S. (2015). Nike. Minneapolis, MN: Bellwether Media, Inc.

Sichol, L. B. (2019). From an idea to Nike: how marketing made Nike a global success. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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