Analysis of a Case Study on Nike Goddess using SWOT Framework

Identifying Problem Signaling Words and Expressions in a Business Situation

1. The following text describe problem situations. Read the text and note down the problem signaling words and expressions.  (4 Marks)

Joyce Lodge opened her first café in 1989. In 2010, Joyce Lodge retired. Her daughter Patricia gave up her job as a management consultant to become the chief executive officer of the Lodge chain.

At this point, the business remained reasonably successful but experienced growing competition in the sector. Indeed, the business faced an increasingly threatening external environment as the economy moved into recession.

The shareholders of the business were becoming increasingly nervous and began to put pressure on Patricia to respond actively to these challenges. It is true that there are staff problems across the chain. High turnover, particularly among serving staff

2. Below are mixed Steeple factors examples of Asda Co. case study. Organise each Steeple factors example according to the suitable category. (3marks each)

3. Read the extract carefully and apply the   pattern of analysis to it. Use numbers only to refer to each answer. (5marks each)

From Competition to Collaboration

(1) Competition in the Scottish electronics industry for skilled technicians is famously intense and in the early 1990s recruitment problems were getting out of hand.

(2) “We were basically poaching from each other and pushing salaries up.

(3) It was becoming a vicious circle,” says Morag McKelvie, a personnel manager at NEC semiconductors.

(4) The idea then that managers from competing companies would start working together to solve the skills shortage would have seemed incredible, she says.

(5) Russell Pryde, manager of one of Scotland’s local enterprise councils, agrees.

(6) I don’t think they would have sat in the same room together.

(7) But in a striking turnaround, a number of competitors have embarked on an unprecedented degree of cooperation on training over the past two years.

(8) Yesterday, their innovative approach was recognized when they received a special training award from the Institute of Personnel and Development at the National Training Awards, organized by the Department for Education and Employment.

a) The starting situation presented in sentence number -----------

b) The problem presented in sentence number---------

c)  The underlying cause of the problem is presented in sentence number -----------

d) Solution has been proposed in sentence number ----------

e)  Evaluation of the solution presented in sentence number -------

Categorizing STEEPLE Factors in the Asda Co. Case Study

Part II  Essay Questions 50 Marks

In about 300 words, write an essay analyzing the below case study using the Swot framework.

Nike’s Goddess  Could a famously masculine company finally click with female customers? That was the challenge behind Nike Goddess, whose goal was to change how the company designed for, sold, and communicated with women.

In its 30-year history, Nike had become the undisputed leader in sports marketing. But beneath the success was an Achilles’ heel. Nike is named after a woman – the Greek goddess of victory – but for most of its history, the company had been perceived as being mostly about men.

Could Nike do more to realize the full potential of female customers?

And how could it afford not to, given the threats to its future with Air Jordan running out of air and brands like Skechers digging into the teen market with shoes inspired by skateboarding, not basketball.

That was the huge question at Nike HQ. The launch of Nike Goddess was the makings of an answer.

Just Doing It Differently

For much of its history, Nike’s destiny was controlled by its founders, Phil Knight and his running buddies, who signed up athletes in locker rooms and made the executive decisions. But by throwing together a diverse team of people with different backgrounds and different levels of seniority, Nike has found that it can keep many of its core attributes while adding new sources of  inspiration.

Take the combination of star designer John Hoke and newcomer Mindy Grossman, vice president of global apparel. Hoke designed the look and feel of the first Nike Goddess store. Then Grossman, whose career has included helping make Ralph Lauren into a retail icon, pitched1 the design ideas to Nike’s top retailers as stores within stores. Now it looks like Nike has a chance to reach a crucial objective: double its sales to women by the end of the decade.

How to Sell to Women

Nike Goddess began as a concept for a women-only store, and there’s a reason why?

Many of the retail settings in which the company’s products were found were a turnoff to female customers: dark, loud, and harsh

in a word, male. In sharp contrast, the Nike Goddess stores have the comforting feel of a woman’s own home.

How to Design for Women

Designing a new approach to retail was only one element in Nike’s campaign. Another was redesigning the shoes and clothes themselves. Nike’s footwear designers worked on 18-month production cycles – which made it hard to stay in step with the new styles and colors for women. The apparel group, which worked around 12-month cycles, was better at keeping up with fashion trends. But that meant that the clothes weren’t coordinated with the shoes – a big turnoff 2 for women.

How to Talk to Women

When Jackie Thomas, Nike’s US brand marketing director for women, first heard the phrase ‘Nike goddess,’ she wasn’t impressed. ‘I don’t like talking to women through gender,’ she says. Nike Goddess had to mean something to women and it was her job to make that happen. ‘Women don’t need anybody’s permission. We are at our best when we are showing women a place where they didn’t think they could be.’ For John Hoke, the real power of Nike Goddess is not about traffic at stores.

It’s about changing minds inside the company. ‘I knew that Goddess could galvanise3 us,’ he says, ‘It was an opportunity to redefine and re-energies our entire brand around a market that was taking off.