Nike
Introduction
The marketing environment has been rapidly changing in the last twenty years. Having a strong customer focus and heavy commitment are essential and satisfying customer’s needs and wants are an important issue in any successful company (Kotler & Armstrong 2005:p5). To understand all the different roles in the marketing environment (such as suppliers, intermediaries, competitors and so on, furthermore environmental forces- demographic, economic, technological and so on.), companies need to be able to lead an organisation to gaze at their opportunities and threats in marketing. Here Nike is used as an example in the retail business sector to indicate the importance of the marketing environment.
Nike
Nike is now the brand leader of sport and has produced a wide range of sports commodities in all sports fields since1972. Nike was founded by Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman in 1964 and was called Blue Ribbon Sports (BRS). In 1971, Knight launched a new design of footwear which was named “NIKE’’ and put the new logo ‘’Swoosh” which was designed by Carolyn Davidson, a student at Portland State University, on the side of the shoes. One year later at The Olympic Games, the new running shoes were introduced to people and used Nike as its brand name instead of BRS. With its successful business growth, many competitors appeared; however they did not yet threaten the market and the position of Nike.
The business has been sharply growing since the first shoes were launched. Sales have been increasing from $2,000 million to $16,000 million between 1990 and 2007. Even though many competitors have appeared, Nike still can raise its sales by about 5 % each year. The greatest and the most successful marketing strategy of Nike was that sponsored by Michael Jordon in 1984. Afterwards Nike signed top athletes like Ronaldinho, Roger Federer, and Michael Schumacher. Besides, Nike has also launched the personalized brand, such as Tiger Woods, to encourage his fans to...
View Full Essay
