It is the world’s leading brand engaged in providing world class athletic footwear, equipment, accessories and apparels. Nike sells its products under its own brand, and also Nike Golf, Nike Pro, Nike+, Air Jordan, Nike Skateboarding, and several of its subsidiaries, including the Cole Haan, Hurley International, Umbro and the Converse.
Nike sells collection of products, as well as shoes and apparel for sports activities like association football, basketball, running, combat sports, tennis, American football, athletics, golf, and cross training for men and women, besides children.
Nike takes the lead in selling the shoes for outdoor activities such as tennis, golf, skateboarding, association football, baseball, American football, cycling, volleyball, wrestling, cheerleading, aquatic activities, auto racing, and many of athletic and recreational uses.
Nike’s Marketing Strategy
Nike’s marketing strategy reposed completely on its brand image, which has strong global presence and continued to grow over the years.
The brand image has kept floating as the result of solid relationship with Nike’s logo that is unique in itself. Further uniqueness and brand image is created with shibboleth “Just Do It.”
The logo and shibboleth has been extensively used in TV commercials and web advertorials. Nike is amongst the leading companies which are heavily investing on print and TV commercials.
What is the Market Segmentation?
Most of the customers of Nike’s products come from one or the other form of sports fraternity. Nike encourages the advertisement of its products by entering into the sponsorship agreements with celebrity athletes, professional teams, apart from the college athletic teams.
Advertising
It was in the year 1982 that Nike for the first time came live for national television ads during broadcast of the New York Marathon. The Cannes Advertising Festival offered Nike as its Advertiser for the Years 1994 and 2003, making it as the first company for receiving the honor twice.
Nike got Emmy Award for best commercial twice ever after the award was first created in year 1990s. The first award was “The Morning After,” a sardonic look that the runner faces on the morning of January 1, 2000 if Y2K problem turned out to be a reality. The second was a 2002 spot named “Move,” shows sequel of well-known and everyday athletes in different athletic pursuits.
Nike also used Beatles song “Revolution” in a 1987 commercial. In this manner, Nike made a string base of number of consumers and these were the consumers who had pretty good intentions to buy.
Nike’s Product Strategy
Nike puts in place variety of innovative strategies for targeting their instantaneous consumers; athletes and other sportsmen. The targeting strategies primarily go in the form of sponsorship advertisements.
By focusing on the athletes, Nike is trying to reach to maximum number of athletes in less of time. In a scenario where the team manager of any team recommends Nike shoes, the whole team is left with no other choice except to go for the shoes.
The second strategy applied by Nike is to exclusively design the product destination. This is done by closely associating success with particular Nike shoes category. Here the effect is further increases by using the sub minimal concept of advertising.
Nike’s pricing strategies
Nike always targets the customers who develop a special kind of intimacy with the product that ultimately leads to the development of loyalty.
It is due to this reason that Nike has established itself in the market with the products higher in price than its competitors. With the high pricing points, the projected value of product can move up significantly.
Taking the consumer trend into account, the Psyche of consumer demands that in the situation where the quality of product is high, consumers can go ahead to pay high price for the product and that too consistently. After the loyalty has been established between the product and consumers, Nike takes the advantage to associate their consumers with their price. Nike knows that consumers will be ready to pay for the product, provided it bears the Nike Logo.
Furthermore, Nike also brings into practice the vertical integration pricing, wherein, they take the advantage of ownership of consumers straight to the channel levels. They also go for the assorted channel level operations with the purpose of controlling the costs as well as persuading the price graph quite substantially.
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Nike’s Distribution Strategy
Distribution strategies incorporated by Nike are again innovative and quite different than its competitors. It is this ground-breaking and out of the box distribution strategy that has helped Nike to excel and reach globally as well as locally.
Nike has placed the strategy of delivering the high quality product to the customer, right when he/she has the demand for it. The distribution of product by Nike is on the level basis.
On this individual level basis distribution, the high prices premium products are given out to only few of acclaimed distributors and the low priced products are sold at comparatively at great discounts in the big retail showrooms like Wal-Mart. Reebok focuses on the concept of the limited distribution strategy, whereas Nike lays down its focus on the global3 market capitalization.
Nike’s Promotion Strategy
Besides the strategic selling, Nike also focuses itself on the customer loyalty. Nike employs qualitative promotional strategies and it is these very strategies that have led Nike to establish in the competitive market.
There are many sportsmen endorsed by Nike and some of the popular ones include Ronaldinho, Ronaldo and Roberto Carlos, and all the Basketballers such as Jermaine O’Neal and Lebron James, and not to mention the golf superstar named Tiger Woods. Nike also focuses on the strategy of selective-demand advertisement for its high priced shoes. As the part of its promotion strategy, Nike has also laid emphasis on promotion through the mass media.
Conclusion
Nike has always been on the top and will remain on the top, when it comes to the production as well as the distribution of innovative sports and general use gear. But, it is also quite pertinent that with intense competition in the market, Nike has to build some really killing marketing strategies.
If it does not address the concern of competitive market, Nike is very likely to recede to the bottom of nadir in less of time.
Exclusive Report (50 pages) on Marketing and Branding Strategy of NIKE can be downloaded HERE.