Case Study Summary: Nike

MGX9550 – Week 2 Case Study Summary: Nike

This article describe the history of Nike, explain and analysis the successful reason of Nike why it is the leading maker of athletic shoes, equipments and apparels in worldwide today. Nike – originally known as Blue Ribbon Sports, is a company which providing especially high quality running shoes for athletes in 1962.

It is because Nike believed “pyramid of influence”, it has invested highly on marketing, especially in advertisements. It has signed exclusive and expensive marketing deals with some of the world's top athletes to promote its products, such as Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Kobe Bryant. In 1998, Nike released the most famous advertisement’s slogan “Just Do It” which they still use it today. In order to expand overseas market to Europe, Nike start to sponsor Brazilian team which won the World Cup in 1994 and let Nike’s image become a famous brand in Europe. This victory expands the international market as well. Nike enjoys a strong competitive position. Therefore, it sponsored several teams and athletes, including most of Chinese teams during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, although their major competitor – Adidas is the official sponsor of the game. This make their sales grew 15% in Asian region. Also, Nike used the celebrity effect in both golf and tennis. In order to entered new athletic footwear, apparel and equipment product categories of golf, they using star athletes – Tiger Woods to change his outfits in golf competition, promote various events let the consumers can talk to he as well. With the technology develop, Nike put a sensor into running shoes and corporate with Apple to use an app to record the athlete’s mileage, calories burned. This made Nike achieved 60% market shares in the running category.

Today, all the successful marketing strategies it achieved make Nike being the top athletic apparel and footwear manufacturer in the world.