The Strategic Capabilities Of The Nike Sportswear Company

In this section of the essay we will consider the Strategic Capabilities of the Nike sportswear company. Nike is the largest seller of sportswear and is the most recognized sports brand in the world. Nike put a huge emphasis on their marketing strategy and their research and design strategy. Through their marketing strategy, their brand logo of a tick is one of the most recognized logos in the world. Offering a range of sportswear products for women, men and children around the world, Nike are constantly developing their products and styles to satisfy all consumer needs throughout a changing environment.
One of the key aspects that have seen Nike grow to where it is now is its resources that it holds. As mentioned before by previous theorists,

This strategy allows them to advertise their products by going into sponsorship agreements with athletes and sports teams that are known all around the world. As a result, consumers associate this high performing athlete/team with the high performing products and pay close attention to the Nike products. By making deals with various sporting players across a range of sports, such as basketball, golf and football, this puts more emphasis on their product range around the world (bizjournals.com, 2015). Nikes branding gives positive image and personality of the company and gives them a competitive advantage over any other sporting company (Graham, Roth, & Dugan,

Nike, very effectively, adapted this dynamic capability into their product range. In previous years, Nike was solely concerned with athletics and the production of products to cater for there performance. However, with the development of technology in all areas of business around the world, Nike adapted to this by introducing technology, in the form of a music player and fitness tracker, into their strategy. Working with Apple, Nike created a tracking system that can be used on your phone or music player that would calculate how far you have ran, what was your average speed while running and calories that you burned. It would also track your daily activity and see whether goals you have set were reached or not (www.nike.com, 2015). Customer’s motivation to get out and achieve these goals increased and in time would lead to more purchasing of the Nike brand. This was a great example of how Nike was dynamic with the changing environment. (www.nike.com, 2015)

One of the main frameworks mentioned above was (Barney J. , 1991) VRIN framework that looked at resources that were Valuable, Rare, Imitability and Non- substitutable (VRIN). Now we will look at the Nikes VRIN resources that can lead towards their competitive