What Is Nike's Competitive Strategy

Nike provided a clear lesson on how supply chain ethics are made visible and can impact a brand. Nike initially had hyper-growth in the 1970’s and early 1980’s. At this time, Nike outsourced the assembly of it’s products to third parties in Asia in order to both drive efficiency and lower labour costs. When asked about their questionable business practices with some of these third-parties, Nike publicly stated that they couldn’t be expected to be responsible for the practices of its suppliers. This statement led to national media and activist groups sharpening their focus on the business practices of Nike suppliers and by extension Nike.

Introduction Nike is a company that manufacturing, designing, developing and selling about the footwear, apparel, equipment, accessories and services. The location of where the Nike headquartered is in Beaverton, Oregon which is in the Portland metropolitan area. It is one of the world 's greatest producers of athletic shoes and apparel and manufacturer of sports equipment. The company was founded in January 25, 1964 which was named as Blue Ribbon sport by then changed the name to Nike in 1978 which was taken from the name of the Greek goddess of victory. It repetition has been known world widely.

Nike and their Just Do it slogan is one that is very known throughout the world. Nike is a fortune 500 company. Nike is a major company in sporting products and has put a lot of time in developing the company reputation in reliable and good quality. Nike is very smart in marketing their products to the general public. They use all types of methods to get the company to attract consumers.

(Locke, R. 2002) Nike felt the positive impacts of their business strategy, expanding their footwear product range and market share dramatically through the 1980’s. Adding various other apparel to their product line beyond footwear to sports clothing and equipment, and of course growing financially from a modest company to a $10 Billion annual revenue global powerhouse. Nike also expanded their market beyond US borders to become a true global player. This exponential growth and massive success could not have been accomplished without the same business strategy that soon would leave the developed world in shock. The negative impacts began.

Nike has gains great reputation for its manufacturing and supplying of sports apparel to people from all corners of the world. It is situated in the United States of America and the headquarters is in Beaverton. It can also be regarded as a leading manufacture and supplier of athletic shoes and sports equipment among all companies. In the year of 1964, there were two predecessors of the Nike company which are Bill Bowerman and Philip Knight, they have found a company name of Blue Ribbon Sports. In year 1978, the Blue Ribbon Sports changed into Nike Incorporation.

In comparison to Nike’s closest competitor, Adidas, the figures are miles apart, in 2014 Adidas spent around €2 billion ($2.7 billion in 2014) on marketing. (www.warc.com, 2014) This is a full $300 million in the difference and contributes to Nike’s successes in marketing itself. Advertisement  The money Nike spends on advertisement is wide-ranging in terms of the different ways the brand is advertised. The most prominent way Nike do this is in local stores, for example in JD sports, not only do JD sports carry the Nike product, but the Nike product is very often displayed in the window of the store, this means it is the first product the consumer sees before entering the store and thus is in their mind when they are looking around the store. Another example of Nike advertisement in effect is the placement of products on social media, Nike pay multinational corporations like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat amongst others to display their products to users of the social media website, this gives Nike the exposure to show off their products to consumers and boost their sales.

An advantage of how Nike uses this strategy is that it allows them to boost their profit by selling differentiated products and Nike have other products that will compensate for products that fails in the market. The difference between Nike and its competitors is that Nike produces their products for men, women, and children in different ways based on the basis needs, physiology, preference of design, and the trends in the market. However, the biggest threats to Nike’s market is the stiff competition with the other sports brands that sell similar products, which causes Nike to continuously come out with new products with new technologies and better

Probable factors that could affect Nike’s business judgements are a range of demographic, social, economic and political. A few have already started to transpire, though others are purely likelihoods. External factors affecting this mix is one of the most common, technology. Before Nike releases its brand new product line to the market, it’s always prepared to authorize that whether or not there has been any sort of major advances from the other competitors that would tracker its launch. Thus they must time this carefully, as other competition may demand to shadow its release with their marketing

In this paper we have discussed the winning strategy of Nike. Nike a global leader in sporting goods industry has established a strong position for enhancing athletic life style. Its brand strives to capture and deliver ‘authentic athletic performance’ across thousands of sports and fitness products. Founded by Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight in 1970s, it is the number one sports manufacturer in the world that offers a wide range for choice for individuals ranging from sports equipment, athletic shoes to clothes. Selling well-designed and very expensive products, Nike is positioned as a premium brand.

Nike has taken their learning and shared them with their manufacturing partners in Asia, and fundamentally changed the game and raised the bar of what it means to deliver incredible sportswear products in the athletic industry. Nike uses different Market Expansion strategies such as: 1)Shared distribution channels among varied product lines lowering cost 2)Large Size provides opportunity for more leverage against