Nike's Marketing Success
Nike’s Marketing Success In a world of intensely competitive multi-billion dollar corporations, Nike’s continued drive towards innovation and developing diverse marketing techniques has propelled them to the forefront of the athletic shoe and apparel industry. The pursuit of success has its costs and risks and Nike is continually faced with challenges that exploit their vulnerabilities and areas of risk. This paper will focus on Nike’s key successes as well as potential risks. It will also provide some recommendations for Nike’s short term marketing future. From its early stages, Nike has been a trend setter within the athletic shoe and apparel industry. This can best be personified by the groundbreaking development of the Nike Air sole. It was designed by Frank Rudy, a NASA engineer who invented the concept of compressing air in the sole of the shoe to alleviate a good amount of the shock athletes encounter while training. This technological breakthrough jetted the Nike brand to the upper echelon of the athletic shoe industry. Continuing with the “air” concept, Nike then created the Nike Air Pump that allowed the sole to be manually adjusted to provide a custom fit to different areas of the foot through multiple individualized chambers with varying volume capacities. Taking into consideration the marketing mix, it is evident that the value of the product, building a strong innovative brand, is Nike’s strength. Their most recent latest creation blends the superiority of the Nike cross trainer with the technology of the I-Pod to create a unique running experience. Superior product quality, itself, lacked panache without recognizable authorities within the sports world endorsing them. A clear indicator to the power of the testimonial was evidenced when tennis superstar John McEnroe began wearing Nike three-quarter top shoes while rehabbing an ankle injury. The presence of the Nike “swoosh” on the feet of tennis’ premier
player sent sales from 10,000 pairs to 1
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