Marketing Report On Nike And Communication Campaign - Essay.

As a newly joined marketing assistant of the Nike marketing team, you have been asked by the director to write a report addressing the following task areas:

Nike uses the marketing orientation approach in business. Provide examples of how Nike demonstrates they are taking a marketing orientation approach.

a. Explain the components of a marketing environment analysis

b. Identify three macro environmental factors that impact Nike’s marketing decisions. Discuss whether these factors create marketing opportunities or threats for Nike.

c. Discuss two forces in Nike’s micro environment that should be monitored

d. Identify and explain three internal environmental factors that could be considered as either strengths or weaknesses in Nike’s operation, from a marketing perspective

a. Explain the importance of market segmentation in planning a marketing strategy for Nike

b. Discuss whether Nike uses a differentiated or undifferentiated targeting strategy for its women’s product range, use examples to illustrate your points

a. Using the 7ps, Identify and describe Nike women’s current marketing mix ensuring you provide detailed descriptions

The Marketing Director has announced a new objective for the company:

To increase awareness of Nike’s women’s only store free training services in London, from 12% to 25% by December 2017 In order to communicate Nike’s new objective, the marketing director requires you to prepare:

a. The content of the poster should be appealing to both internal and external stakeholders (i.e. employees as well as customers).
b. The content must include image/s and brief written message/s that will increase awareness of Nike’s women’s only store free training.

a. Include an explanation of the promotional mix theory
b. Describe the campaign target audience and the response sought in relation to the new objective.
c. Outline the chosen channel to be used
d. Include an explanation of the communications key message
e. Apply / use a marketing theory such as ‘AIDA’ (Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action) or ‘DRIP’ (Differentiate, Reinforce, Inform and Persuade) to explain how the poster created will achieve the objective set.
f. Include an explanation of how feedback will be collected

Nike Inc. is an important supplier of sports footwear, equipments and apparel. It was founded on 25^th January 1964 as Blue ribbon sports by American manufacturer. In 1978 the new Nike Inc was formed under the name of Nike. The meaning of Nike in Greek language is goddess of victory. Nike is the largest popular brand in the world (Deng, 2009).The company sells qualitative athletic shoes, sports shoes, footwear, equipments, accessories, bags. For that purpose Nike makes huge investment in advertisement and brand promotion and uses different kinds of logo, slogans “Just do it”, swoosh logo. Other side this report explains marketing strategy of Nike, importance of Nike products and communication campaign for women free store training.

Marketing is the network through which company interact with its existing and potential consumers. Marketing orientation is a process to satisfy customer needs and wants. Nike is highly focused on customers. The objective of market orientation is to create attention of the customers for the products. Nike is the market orientation because it provides designer and fashionable products with the excellent features and styles. Its primary purpose is to focus on athletic and sports shoes. The most popular products of Nike are apparel, running and athletic shoes, equipments, accessories, basketball, football, volleyball, shorts, golf, soccer and auto racing. Nike is the largest brand in the world with advertising slogans “just do it”, “Bo knows”, “there is no finish line”. Through market orientation approach it can focuses on more production with high quality, build good customer relationship and increase values of customers. It helps in increasing demand interest of consumers for athletics shoes and other products. In this way marketing orientation approach is useful for increasing sells and profits of Nike (Lim & Phillips, 2008)

Marketing environment consists of various factors which affect company business and capacity to develop good image in front of customers, relationship between customers and company. Components of marketing environment analysis are as given below (Angeles, 2014).

• Micro environment
• Macro environment

Micro environment factors exist within the company and affect its performance, decision making process and internal business activities. There are various components of micro environment, which are as follows.

• Customers
• Suppliers
• Competitors
• Pubic
• Marketing intermediaries
• The corporation itself

Macro environment factors exit outside the company and these are uncontrollable and influence overall organization performance and decision making. These factors are economic forces; demographic, political, cultural forces legal, social conditions, technological changes and natural forces.

Organization cannot control the macro environment factors but it can control the micro environment factors. Micro and macro environment factors both affect Nike marketing decisions. So company should analyze these factors and control these factors for the success of the association (Thomas, 2007).

Task 2: Marketing environment

A company’s growth would depend on the fact that how it handles the external conditions and factors. Therefore, company carries out PESTLE analysis to control the external environment factors. A PESTLE analysis of Nike identifies opportunities and threats of the external environment. Three macro environment factors that affect Nike marketing business are economic, technological, and socio-cultural factors. Nike marketing decisions and performance depends on economy of the country where the company sells athletic footwear, equipments, bags, sleeper and apparel so it needs to identify these economic forces for doing business in market. Economic consistency of developing markets, speedy expansion of developing markets, recession of Chinese economy these economic forces play vital role in Nike performance and decision making process. Nike has an opportunity to speedy growth in performance and development by increasing its operations at high level and company should also focus on the environment threats like labor cost and fast expansion of Chinese economy.

PESTLE analysis also identifies technological forces which affect Nike business because Nike marketing decisions depend on the technology available for the business. Technology external forces like resource and monetary support, increasing investment in research and development, speedy technology obsolescence influence Nike business. These external technological forces are essential to identify opportunities as well as threats of various technologies for Nike business (Kim, 2010).

Socio-cultural factors also affect various Nike products like shoes, apparel, equipments and accessories. The socio-cultural factors such as cultural changes, income, wealth in rising countries and employment play important role in Nike performance. Nike can adopt new product development strategies to deal with safe products for leisure activities. PESTLE provides significant opportunities to Nike Inc. for developing products and business expansion. With the help of PESTLE analysis, Nike can identify marketing threats and opportunities of environment. It also plays important role in Nike performance, improving Nike stability and improving Nike brand image and business image.

Nike is well known brand of sports shoes. However, it also makes apparel, equipments, basketball, football, volleyball. Nike’s slogans and logos namely “just do it slogans” and “swoosh” have been set up. For analysis of Nike, here is being discussing porter five forces model which has been developed to understand the level of competition, bargaining power of supplier. Nike five forces analysis are as follows (Levy, 2007)

The two forces of Porter model are being discussed as below (Demil & Lecocq, 2010).

• Buying power of suppliers: The bargaining power of Nike’s suppliers is law; its products are made in 42 countries in 620 factories. As per one of the principles discussed on the five force model, the small size of suppliers reduces chances of competition among suppliers. Nike holds strong control over its suppliers and evaluates them regularly, which depicts that Nike focuses on bargaining power of suppliers.
• Bargaining power of buyers: Bargaining power of buyers is law to moderate and number of competitors is very small. Nike focuses on presentation and good customer relations, which will help it to reduce bargaining power of buyers. In this way, it could be inferred that porter five force model is an excellent mechanism to analyze the formation of the competitive environment.

The factors such as strength of employees, tactical risk, innovation, financial, employee risk are considered the part of internal business environment. The internal business factors affect the internal business of the company. Nike can employ SWOT analysis to identify its strength and weakness alongside opportunities and threats. Nike sells its product through retailers, websites, distributors, licensee all over the world (Dalavagas, 2015).The strength and weakness of Nike’s operations are discussed as below:

• Strong worldwide brand: Nike is the largest brand in the world and its logos such as “just do it” and “swoosh” are recognizing across the world.
• Low manufacturing cost: Nike is using low manufacturing cost for making products. It is also doing business in Argentina, India, Brazil and Mexico. In this way it increasing business day by day at universal level.
• Strong research and development: Nike uses strong research and development techniques for designing and manufacturing its athletic shoes, footwear, equipments and accessories.

• Poor Labor practices: Nike is facing many problems due to poor labor practices, conditions of workers, low wages and safety issues, which would affect the image of the company. Therefore, Nike needs to resolve all these problems.
• High prices: Nike sells product at high prices due to its well developed brand. Sometimes it becomes risky if economy falls into recession.

Task 3: Marketing strategies

These weaknesses affect the business of Nike performance and its operation adversely; therefore, it should control these weaknesses.

Nike marketing strategy completely depends on product image and Nike constructive product images have been kept optimistic because there is a strong relation with company logo which is unique and quite different from others. Nike uses marketing strategy for product endorsement. Nike mainly focuses on consumers, in this way Nike is able to reach with its customers and clients who wants to purchase products. Sportsmen are the major consumers of Nike products. In segmentation Nike segregates the market into different segments on the basis of demographic forces. This helps in identifying men and women running shoes. Nike marketers make stability in the market so that the consumers can buy products from any shops, retail stores as well as through online sources. Through segmentation Nike can increases its competitiveness, profits and customer retention. Segmentation is an important technique to increase focus on the company for better performance. In this way, market segmentation plays significant role in planning a marketing strategy for Nike (Kotler, 2009).

A target market is the market where a company sells its products and services to its customers. Targeting strategy of Nike focuses on consumers buying capacity, choices, needs and wants. Nike is one the biggest brand in athletic shoes in the world. It highly focuses on women choices and needs; recently a new website has been launched by Nike for women namely nikegodess.com. The website provides information about Nike products and fitness tips for women. Now a days, Nike producing products for women like designer and fashionable clothes, bags, athletic footwear, golf, soccer, apparel and wrestling. It is the premium brand in athletic footwear and produces wide range of athletic footwear for women.

The purpose of Nike’s targeting strategy for women is to provide higher quality of products to women. Sports bra and shorts are another example of Nike targeting strategy which is being used by women. They are comfortable in wearing and fitting. So women prefer mostly Nike products. Females are using its air shoes because Nike air reduces weight of shoe and provide cushioning. Tennis shoes like Nike Zoom Vapor 9, Nike breathe court also available in various sizes for girls. It also provides running shoes to girls they are good in arch support, cushioning, protect from injury and helps in improving athletic performance. Nike supply extensively athletic shoes for athlete as well as daily use. With the use of Nike products women’s training segment has improved. In this manner it can be said that scope of Nike products is very wide and it is being used by women all over world (Parker, 2009).

Task 4: Marketing mix

Marketing mix strategy is a set of actions which a company uses to promote its brand and product in the market. Nike uses good marketing mix strategy so it can face competitors like Adidas and rebook (Fowler & Hope, 2007). Nike seven Ps of marketing mix are follows.

• Products: Nike is producing various products like sports shoes, footwear, bags, accessories, jerseys, basketball, football and shorts for women, men and children. It is selling women fitness apparel, workout clothes for exercise and bags. Nike focuses women needs, wants and expectations. Now a days, company is opening various stores only for women designing and fashionable products.
• Price: The prices of Nike are based on the target market customers and competitors. It is the world’s largest brand and using different kind of integration in pricing for controlling cost in the market. If the company adopts good pricing strategy then it can attract women, men and children. Women are using various products of this company.
• Place: Nike athletic shoes, equipments, accessories, apparel bags are being sold at different stores in domestic market as well as in foreign countries. The company sells its products to 20,000 retailers in US and approximately 200 countries in the world. Nike customer service is worldwide and the company sells its product through retailers, distributors and licensee.
• Promotion: Promotion mainly depends on stores location and it is the source of advertising of product through various channels. Nike takes services of Brazilian Soccer Team mainly Ronaldo, Renaldo, and Roberto Carlos, Lebron James and Jermane O’Neal for basketball, Lance Armstrong for cycling, and Tiger Woods for Golf as brand ambassadors.The high income and loyal customer service are the two factors that have contributed significantly to the Nike brand.
• People:People plays vital role in marketing mix of Nike and company needs faithful and dedicated people who run the shops, stores effectively and attract customers. Female staff is appointed for women products by the company.
• Processes: Processes refers how the company offered services to its customers and what customers pay for that service and product. So, mainly Nike focuses on the processes which relates to delivery of products to women.
• Physical evidence: Physical evidence refers to how we are assuring our customers for the products and services, for that purpose Nike uses best websites and well trained employees. In this way it can be articulated that Nike uses excellent marketing strategy for products and services. Current marketing strategy of Nike for women is very impressive for providing various benefits to female.

Conclusion:

Nike Inc. is a marketer of different kind of products like sports and athletic shoes, footwear, bags, dresses, equipments, accessories, apparel. It is the largest multinational brand in the world. It focuses on customers’ needs, wants, and desires. There are many competitors of Nike in their industry like puma, Adidas, and underarmor. Nike is using excellent marketing strategy to increase its sells and profit. This report also described about the environment of Nike and women products. The company makes huge investment in advertisement and brand promotion to maintain good image in the market. Now a day’s especially women prefer Nike products like sports bra, shots, footwear and fashionable dresses. So it can be said that scope of Nike is very wide and it is largest brand in the world (Nwakanma, Ude & Unachukwu, 2015).

References

Angeles, R., 2014. Using the Technology-Organization-Environment Framework for analyzing Nike’s “Considered Index” Green Initiative, a decision support system-driven system. Journal of Management and Sustainability, 4(1), p.96.

Barnett, M.L., 2007. Stakeholder influence capacity and the variability of financial returns to corporate social responsibility. Academy of management review, 32(3), pp.794-816.

Bentley, M.D., Bentley Kinetics, Inc., 2007.Method and system for athletic motion analysis and instruction. U.S. Patent 7,264,554.

Demil, B. and Lecocq, X., 2010. Business model evolution: in search of dynamic consistency. Long range planning, 43(2), pp.227-246.

Deng, T., 2009. Facing global economic crisis. International journal of business and management, 4(3).

Douglas, S.P., Craig, C.S. and Nijssen, E.J., 2001. Integrating branding strategy across markets: Building international brand architecture. Journal of International Marketing, 9(2), pp.97-114.

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Fowler, S.J. and Hope, C., 2007. Incorporating sustainable business practices into company strategy. Business strategy and the Environment,16(1), pp.26-38.

Füller, J., Jawecki, G. and Mühlbacher, H., 2007. Innovation creation by online basketball communities. Journal of Business Research, 60(1), pp.60-71.

Jason Dalavagas., 2015. Nike: Analysis of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats article 46, viewed on 3^rdJuly 2017. < https://www.gurufocus.com/news/325905/nike-analysis-of-strengths-weaknesses-opportunities-threats>

Part 2- Communication Campaign

Kim, L.S., 2010. Embedding Corporate Social Responsibility Into Corporate Strategy: A Review Of A Best Employer Company In Vietnam(Doctoral dissertation, Universiti Sains Malaysia).

Kotler, P., 2009. Marketing management: A south Asian perspective. Pearson Education India.

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• Nike uses strong promotional mix theory to communicate the target audience and promotion of the products; therefore Nike uses celebrities for the promotion of products and to attract the customers. Nike uses 7ps of marketing mix theory for increasing awareness of women for Nike products. They are as follows: product, price, place, promotion, people, processes, physical evidence (Angeles, 2014).
• A target audience is the planned audience and readership of publication, advertisement and other message therefore it is the particular group of consumers within predetermined target market, identified targets for advertisement and message. The objects of Nike for increasing awareness of Nike women of stores free training are discussed as follows. (1) The primary object of Nike is to identify needs, wants and desires of women. (2) To protect and improve the position of Nike as a number one athletic brand in America. (3) To create a strong position in fitness market for women (Kitchen & Burgmann, 2010).
• Nike uses various channels for promotion of the products like different kind of posters, internet sites, TV, radio and celebrities. Nike provides free training to women to increasing awareness of women for Nike products.
• Communication key messages are important tool for all communications work and they help in achievement of objectives, development of plans, ensuring consistency and measuring success. Therefore key messages are the center part of writing. Key messages are such as concise, active, positive, short, and specific.
• Nike Company uses AIDA theory to sell the products and attract the women, men, and children. There are four steps in AIDA theory. They are as follows

Attention/ Attract: For taking attention of people Nike uses different kind of pictures and words.

Interest: This is the important stage of AIDA theory. After taking attention of target audience Nike analysis the interest and expectations of customers.

Desire: It is the third stage of AIDA model. Nike Company focuses on customers need, wants and satisfaction.

Action: It is the fourth stage of Nike. After attention, desire and interest company find out best action through which fulfilling the needs of customers.

• Feedback is important source for ensuring satisfaction of women for store free training for products. There are many sources to collect feedback from Nike women. They are as follows Customer contract and email helps in collecting feedback, social listening, Analysis women satisfaction through social media and surveys, Use face book and twitter for collecting feedback, Company booth, Generate social media accounts with rating system

References

Angeles, R., 2014. Using the Technology-Organization-Environment Framework for analyzing Nike’s “Considered Index” Green Initiative, a decision support system-driven system. Journal of Management and Sustainability,4(1), p.96.

Kitchen, P.J. and Burgmann, I., 2010.Integrated marketing communication. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Van Laer, J. and Van Aelst, P., 2010. Internet and social movement action repertoires: Opportunities and limitations.Information, Communication & Society,13(8), pp.1146-1171.

Hsu, C.L. and Lin, J.C.C., 2008. Acceptance of blog usage: The roles of technology acceptance, social influence and knowledge sharing motivation.Information & management,45(1), pp.65-74.

Lawrence, A.T. and Weber, J., 2008.Business and society: Stakeholders, ethics, public policy. Tata McGraw-Hill Education.

Werhane, P.H., 2008. Mental models, moral imagination and system thinking in the age of globalization.Journal of business ethics,78(3), pp.463-474.