RESEARCH DEVELOPMENT
MARKETPLACE RESEARCH
The Nike brand has a
huge marketplace, always trying to improve on their current products and create
more for the consumers to love. Nike markets all kinds of footwear which
includes footwear designed for aquatic activities, baseball, cheerleading,
football, golf, lacrosse, outdoor activities, skateboarding, tennis,
volleyball, walking, wrestling, and other athletic and recreational uses. Nike
doesn’t only focus on footwear though, research found that the consumers wanted
more than just footwear, so they also market apparel with licensed college and
professional teams, and league logos.
Performance equipment
can also be found under the Nike brand name, including bags, socks, sport
balls, eyewear, timepieces, electronic devices, bats, gloves and protective
equipment. It isn’t enough to just wear the shoes, athletes want anything and
everything they can find to have the Nike logo attached to it.
Nike differentiates
themselves from their competitors because they focus on the technological and
scientific side of their footwear. Customers of Nike are not only looking for a
fashion statement, they are also looking for performance, technology, fashion and
leisure.
MARKET OBSERVATION
Nike conducts both
qualitative and quantitative research for gathering vital information for its
products and new launches of products. They put focus on the consumer for why,
how, or what they do to make a decision when purchasing Nike products. Nike
analyses consumer markets, as well as competitor’s markets in order to
understating the consumer’s buying behaviors and their buying patterns. Nike
uses online surveys and questionnaires to understand what the consumers like or
do not like, and what they could do to change the consumer’s attitudes to buy
more of their products. Because Nike is so interested in customer feedback,
they have gained the loyalty and value they have today. Through market
observation Nike has added a special feature to their website where customers
can create custom shoes to match their individual style and create a one of a
kind pair of shoes.
ONLINE SURVEY ANALYSIS
Nike administers
online surveys to their consumers. Doing so gives Nike the opportunity to learn
what motivates their customers, uncover what's important to them, and gather
other meaningful comments and feedback on Nike's performance and products.
These online survey
are more likely to yield honest responses. This is because "respondents
are more likely to provide open and honest feedback in a more private survey
method. Methods such as online surveys, paper surveys, or mobile surveys are
more private and less intimidating than face-to-face survey interviews or
telephone surveys," (Wyse 2012). The private environment mixed with the
anonymity aspect of online surveys are what generate honest responses.
This is one benefit of many that Nike would use online surveys for gathering
data. Other benefits include: cost, decision making, and ability to compare
results.
When it comes to cost,
online surveys have a "very small cost per respondent... Even if incentives are given to respondents,
the cost per response is often far less than the cost of administering a paper
survey or phone survey, and the number of potential responses can be in the
thousands." Nike does offer incentives for completing one of their surveys
with the access code provided on your receipt. The current Nike survey incentive is $5
off your next purchase. Nike saves money by giving out these incentives, and
ultimately makes money by doing so in the long run because the respondents
answers make for better decision making.
Using online surveys
is an unbiased approach to making better business decisions. This is because
unbiased responses are given, which is raw data that can be analyzed. Analyzing
these unbiased results will allow Nike to see address certain areas of
importance rather than "wasting time and valuable resources on areas of
little or no concern." Gathering and analyzing this data over time will
allow Nike to learn about their consumers as they use Nike products over time.
After online surveys
are taken by Nike consumers, the results are analyzed and decisions are made.
These results will always be available for comparison to other results over
time. The attitudes, thoughts, comments, and concerns of Nike products could
change, or stay the same throughout the years. Either way, online surveys allow
Nike to compare results and see where consumers think the business is doing
well, and which areas consumers feel need improving.
The Nike store survey
mentioned earlier is featured on the receipt with a code to participate. The
Nike survey has its own address called mynikevisit-na.com. After
completion of the survey, the participant will receive a $5 Nike gift card.
There are conditions when using the gift card, which include:
- Must be redeemed in-person at a Nike
store
- Cannot be combined with any other offer
or discount, including employee discount
- Cannot be redeemed for cash or applied to
previous purchases
- Expires 60 days after issued
- One time use only
- Cannot complete more than two surveys
within seven days
- Not valid at Nike.com or phone orders (Nike 2016)
So there are
conditions with the incentive, but they are not unreasonable by any means. It's
just enough for consumers to go online, take the survey, and receive a small
reward for helping out the business and providing them with valuable consumer
data.
PRECEDENT STUDIES
ADVERTISING STRATEGIES
Nike advertising is
one of the most effective emotional branding examples in the marketing world
today. Their customer loyalty is off the charts, all thanks to the Nike brand
strategy and masterful application of emotional branding. Today, we look at Nike’s
marketing strategy and how they use the centuries-old archetype of Heroism to
tell their story.
Nike brand strategy is
to build a powerful brand so powerful that it inspires fervent customer loyalty
from people literally all over the world. This is because Nike advertising uses
the emotional branding technique of archetypes in its advertising more
specifically, the story of the Hero. It’s an age-old tale, a tale of a hero
pitted against a great foe, and after a great struggle, emerging triumphant. In
a way, you could say that Nike's marketing strategy is thousands of years old,
and has been inspiring customer loyalty the entire time.
PRECEDENT STUDIES
Nike advertising isn’t
the only group that uses the Hero archetype to inspire customer loyalty. Many
other companies use this emotional branding technique to great effect. In most
cases, the foe is external. The most common story of the hero is that of a man
of humble origins setting out to defeat a great evil – one far more powerful
than he and, against all odds, emerging triumphant. This same pattern could
apply to, say, a home security system against a house fire, or an antacid
against heartburn. As long as there is a clearly identified enemy and a clearly
identified hero, the emotional branding can begin.
Nike brand strategy is
excellent on this end because not only is the internal foe someone we can all
hate, the hero is the viewer! In one way or another, we are all the hero of our
own story, and Nike marketing has long since identified that feeling and used
it to inspire timeless customer loyalty.
MARKETING PROGRAMS AND MARKETING STRATEGIES
ADVERTISING
Nike has named its
advertising efforts “demand creation,” spending $3 billion under this label in
the 2013-2014 fiscal year. These costs include both media marketing/advertising
and its sports endorsements, some of its primary sponsorships.
Just Do It, Nike’s most well-known and powerful
campaign began as simple 1988 advertising campaign and exploded into one of the
company’s two most recognizable trademarks. This campaign urged sedentary
people to run that first lap or step onto the court for the first time and
increased the company’s revenue by 1,000% in the first decade of its run. Collectively,
Nike’s “Swoosh” trademark and the “JUST DO IT.” phrase have an estimated worth
of $26 billion.
SALES PROMOTION
Consumer & Trade
Nike has the opportunity
to use direct-to-consumer approaches of sales through its factory stores as
well as through sports outfitters and shoe stores. Alongside this, Nike uses
its unsurpassed advertising and branding initiatives to communicate brand value
to consumers. One of the top sportswear providers in the world, Nike has no
problem convincing consumers of its worth. Its use of top-tier athletes who
simply wear the product ensures consumers can see the products in action.
PUBLIC RELATIONS
With Nike being such a
big player in the athletic footwear, apparel, and gear industry, it is very
important that they have top-notch public relations strategies. Nike knows this
all too well from their late 1990s PR nightmare when Nike products "become
synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime and arbitrary abuse," (Beder
2016). Due to the bad PR, Nike's reputation dropped along with its sales and
share prices. Nike had to change their image and make the company appear to be
caring and concerned about working conditions in contractor's factories in
China and Indonesia.
During this time, Nike
developed a public relations strategy to deal with this problem. Their efforts
included " upgrading its own code
of conduct and participating in a range of coalitions including the Global
Alliance for Workers and Communities aimed at helping workers in third world
shoe and clothing factories and other business coalitions that represented
social responsibility." Nike also spent money on philanthropy in
countries where its products were made. These public relation strategies were
necessary for bringing Nike back to the top and leading in the industry.
Public relations is a
very important part of business. PR is like the middleman between the public
and the company. Those working in PR for Nike, or any other company, will have
to deal with the good publicity, and the bad of course. Public relations and
the use of effective strategies is what got Nike products back to being
associated with greatness and athleticism instead of with sweatshops.
PERSONAL SELLING
Nike uses personal
selling in order to build a relationship with its consumers in order for them
to purchase their products. Nike has been reaching out to young
audiences by way of a social media campaign that calls on youth to share their
own sports story.
The campaign is called
“What do you play for?” and its purpose is to get youth excited about their own
involvement with sports and to share their stories. This is joint effort
between both the athletics brand and Youth Noise which is a social network for
teens and social media firm Brickfish (Dilworth, 2009). The purpose of
this campaign is to allow Nike to build an online community in the youth
demographic so that youths can share their personal stories about sports and to
encourage these youths to be creative about telling their stories
visually (Dilworth, 2009). Nike’s Jordan brand uses celebrities such as
Lebron James.
DIRECT MARKETING
Nike uses direct
marketing to directly reach customers and potential customers on a personal
basis, or mass-media basis such as with magazine ads, commercials, etc. Nike
also is using social media and direct email as another avenue of media to reach its customers By
marketing directly to where Nike's target market is, they are more likely to
get their message across to who they want to see it.
References
Beder, S. (2016). Nike
Repuation Management. Retrieved March 23, 2016, from
http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/environment/PR/Nike.html#PR
Conlon, J. (2015). The
Brand Brief Behind Nike’s Just Do It Campaign. Branding Strategy
Insider. Retrieved from: http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2015/08/behind-nikes-campaign.html#.VvMNv7xw7vM
Kim, S. (2014). Nike
may get pickier, but full spending ahead on athlete endorsements. ABC
News. Retrieved from:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/nike-pickier-full-spending-ahead-athlete-endorsements/story?id=25764291
Parrish, W. (n.d.).
NIKE.COM DIRECT MAIL - THEWKYD. Retrieved March 23, 2016, from
http://cargocollective.com/thewkyd/NIKE-COM-DIRECT-MAIL
Wyse, S. E. (2012,
June 29). The 4 Main Reasons to Conduct Surveys. Retrieved March 23, 2016, from
http://www.snapsurveys.com/blog/4-main-reasons-conduct-surveys/
Wyse, S. E. (2012,
August 15). 4 Main Benefits of Survey Research. Retrieved March 23, 2016, from
http://www.snapsurveys.com/blog/4-main-benefits-survey-research/
Zanian, M. (2015).
Forbes Fab 40: The most valuable brands in sports. Forbes. Retrieved
from:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2015/10/22/the-forbes-fab-40-the-most-valuable-brands-in-sports-2015/#adfd90e2e2aa
Try this link Mynikevisit na .
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