NIKE – EK Marketing Blog by Ericka Koehler

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NIKE Company

One of the 500 Fortune companies that captured my attention and that I have chosen for the Marketing Research course is Nike company. Nike is well-known for making shoes, clothing, and other products for sports, exercise, or everyday use (NIKE, 2017). There are many reasons I have chosen this company. First, when I was a kid, I remember my family buying its products, especially tennis shoes for everyday use. I became familiar with the brand name from an early age. Also, I am always doing sports or running around the park and NIKE accompanied me during my long walks. Then, I remember trying to switch to other brands, but I ended up returning to it for the quality. And, this brand is not limited only to tennis shoes, the brand also offers many other products.

A Product to Launch

The product that I choose to explore as a new Nike product is a line of sport-dress shoes. These shoes can have models for both men and women. They can be for everyday use or can be used for formal situations. So, the appearance of the shoes could fit in many environments. People don’t need to worry about using them outside to walk because they will be comfortable, and they can be worn on the job because they look dressy too if worn with pants or a dress.

People don’t need to be stressed about what to wear for going to the park, a party or to the job because the shoes fit many occasions. And, using these shoes saves time and money since one pair can be used for more than one purpose. This idea fits well with Nike’s reputation for encouraging regular people to be more athletic. And, it is likely to be accepted by the public due to Nike’s reputation for making high quality shoes and clothing.

The first proposed research objective for the new product will be to know how to increase comfort and the same time have a formal look. The questions will include shoe color, heel size, arch support level, and others. This will help to determine if the concept is viable and if it will gain people’s acceptance. Then we can determine if it is worthwhile to produce and sell.

A second research objective will be to determine how customers can gain brand loyalty. It means: what do NIKE shoes need to offer for people to continue buying the products from this company.

The methods that will be used in the research design will include interviews and surveys. Those interviews will be given to men and women of working age to identify what they like or do not like about the product idea to be launched. Interviews will be given to acquaintances and people in the mall. The surveys will be online. There is an online software survey called SurveyMonkey that helps people who want to create a survey. With this software, I can prepare the questions, and it can send my questions to people via social media, e-mail, and others means. I can also do an online sentiment analysis to see how frequently the brand is mentioned positively or negatively. Once the data is collected, it will be analyzed for the best performance of the product. The goal of this marketing research is to determine how consumers extract value from their use of the product. Also, people’s commentaries on the blog are always welcome in order to know what they think about the product. These commentaries will supplement the survey data analysis, but the main conclusions will be made using scientific analysis methods.

Reference

NIKE (2017). Retrieved from: https://www.nike.com/us/en_us/

Preliminary Findings and Limitations

How does the market research you have so far done support your chosen organization’s objectives?

From the market research I have done so far for my new product, I need to emphasize the importance of NIKE’s brand to many generations, especially to young people. The new type of NIKE shoes is planned to serve many people, but with particular emphasis on millennials that are a big population, according to U.S. Census Data. Nike is consistently ranked as a top performing brand among millennials, and the reason is simple: Nike starts with an honest and authentic set of core values and strives to communicate those in an open conversation across a broad range of media (Smith, 2015, p.1). Taking into account the strength of the brand name, we propose introducing a new formal and stylish shoe that will enable potential customers to go formally dressed to a job and exercise afterwards.

Currently, NIKE is considered number one in sports among three main competitors that are Adidas, Pumas, and New Balance Athletics. Also, it is the most valuable sports brand in the world, worth $15.9 billion (Ozanian, 2012, p.1). In the marketing research, I used The Claritas PRIZM that is a set of geo-demographics customer segmentations for the United States. The customer segmentations of PRISM are numbered from 01 to 66 and have been given various names per the categories. In the marketing strategy, the proposed target for the new product according to PRIZM is “mostly college-educated, living in sprawling homes beyond the nation’s beltways. Also, they are upscale professionals who have the disposable cash and sophisticated tastes (04 F1 Accumulated Wealth).”

All the research done aligns with the organization’s objectives since NIKE strives to maintain its ranking place among competitors in the industry reaching many age groups, especially young generations that are a big population. It also wants to keep growing in sales –which can be possible when selling shoes to people with large disposable income. Also, NIKE organization is known for producing stylish shoes and the proposed product will follow this norm.

What industry trends (and possible future trends) have you identified regarding your product proposal, and what are some possible implications of these trends on your organization?

The industry trends that I have identified are that U.S. athletic footwear industry grew by 3 percent in 2016, generating $17.5 billion and unit sales also grew by 3 percent (Guyduy, 2017, p.1). The market for men’s footwear is comparatively larger as compared to the women and kids’ footwear and the trend is expected to remain the same throughout the forecast period 2015-2021 (ReportBuyer, 2015, p.1). However, the market for non-athletic footwear is higher than athletic. This is due to changing fashion trends and a rise of working women (BusinessWire, 2015, p.1). During the period 2015-2021, the trend in the footwear market, is that the non-athletic footwear market segment will dominate (BusinessWire, 2015, p.1). My proposal product is a formal shoe, mainly for going to work formally dressed, but additionally could be used for exercising.

The implications of these trends could be positive to NIKE if they align with them. The organization needs to pay attention to these trends when making budgets for their products and manufacturing. It is important that they listen what consumers are expecting to find in a pair of shoes like comfort, multipurpose uses, fashion styles or other characteristics.

How does your proposed marketing strategy align to legal, ethical, and industry standards?

The proposed marketing strategy aligns to legal, ethical, and industry standards since it doesn’t do anything that hurts the company, the customers or the industry. NIKE knows the importance of not doing unethical promotions. It is respectful about what the law says in the country, a region or a city. In the past, they had problems with their marketing strategy. For example, they used a song by the Beatles without permission (Hilburn, 1987, p.1). But that experience taught them to change and now, they pay attention to the marketing strategy used. Whatever is done incorrectly will not only create dislike of the proposed product, it will also hurt the brand name.

What limitations have you encountered in creating a market proposal for your product? Was this due to gaps in the market research you conducted?

Limitations that were encountered in creating the market proposal are unpredictable behavior and bias. Then, gaps are not necessarily because of the research I did, they could be due to external factors.

From the research done, currently there is a need for the proposed product. But, human behavior is unpredictable. Marketing research attempts to measure the behavior of a group of individuals, but there is no guarantee that the measured behavior will be repeated in the future (Hubbard, 2017, p.1). It is possible that in the future people change their minds and feel that there is no need to purchase and wear shoes for multiple purposes, and they simply buy shoes for each activity they do. Trends can change for diverse circumstances.

Another limitation is bias that could be generated in the surveys given to the target population or those who are in the sample size. Hubbard (2017) says: “Researchers may write leading questions or arrange questions in an order likely to produce a particular answer. Additional human error – including poor facilitator training, recruitment of no representative samples, and rushed interpretation of results – create the potential for ambiguous or unusable research results (p.1).”

References

American Association of Marketing: About AMA (2017). Retrieved from:

https://www.ama.org/AboutAMA/Pages/Statement-of-Ethics.aspx

Claritas PRIZM Premier Lifestage Group: 04 F1 Accumulated Wealth (2017).

Retrieved from:

https://segmentationsolutions.nielsen.com/mybestsegments/Default.jsp?ID=38&id1=CLA.PZP&webid=null&id4=F1&code=04&social=no

Hilburn, Robert (1987). Beatles Sue Nike over Use of Song. Los Angeles Times.

Retrieved from:

http://articles.latimes.com/1987-07-29/entertainment/ca-4364_1_beatles-song

Lori, Hubbard (2017). Limitation for a Marketing Research Project. Chron.

Retrieved from:

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/limitation-marketing-research-project-75633.html