Marketing Spotlight: Nike

Marketing Spotlight: Nike

The key success factors for Nike is their exciting marketing strategy, product innovation and adhering to the mission which is “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. Blue Ribbon Sports and Nike’s strategy has always been to serve the athletes. Nike satisfied its goals by listening to athletes by finding out what they wanted and then providing products that would enhance their performance.

Nike established a strong brand name through product innovation and exciting advertisement campaigns linking with sports and fitness and also with highly visible celebrities such as Michael Jordan and Steve Prefontaine. Nike chose professional athletes in their advertising campaign that were not only good in sports but also embodied the ideals of determination, individually, self sacrifice, and winning. (Hiroo, Kevin) Nike believed that people were heavily influenced by what top athletes were wearing and would purchase shoes accordingly. Nike stayed focused on being an authentic sports and fitness company serving the athlete and sports minded people by encouraging Americans to participate more actively in sports and also by challenging athletes to chase their goals.

Nike’s campaigns even featured an 80 year old long distance runner that had a daily exercise regime of running across the Golden Gate Bridge. The advertising slogan “Just Do It “placed an emphasis on self empowerment through sports and fitness for all ages.

It helped launch an exercise craze and created a huge new market for running shoes. Part of Nike’s success was also contributed to making corrections and adapting to change when it found out that the American style ads where too aggressive and that the brand images were perceived as too fashion oriented in Europe. Nike had to authenticate its brand by building credibility and relevance in European sports by becoming actively involved as sponsors of youth soccer, national teams and local clubs.

Nike has a wide diversified range of sports products. However, the income of the business is still heavily dependent upon its share of the footwear market. This may leave it vulnerable if for any reason its market share erodes. The retail sector is very price sensitive. Nike does have its own retailer in Nike Town. However, most of its income is derived from selling into retailers. Retailers tend to offer a very similar experience to the consumer. You can not tell one sports retailer from another, so margins tend to get tighter as