World Resources Institute Sustainable Enterprise Program A program of the World Resources Institute Expanding the Playing Field: Nike’s World Shoe Project Teaching Note For more than a decade, WRI's Sustainable Enterprise Program (SEP) has harnessed the power of business to create profitable solutions to environment and development challenges. BELL, a project of SEP, is focused on working with managers and academics to make companies more competitive by approaching social and environmental challenges as unmet market needs that provide business growth opportunities through entrepreneurship, innovation, and organizational change. Permission to reprint this case is available at the BELL case store. Additional information on the Case Series, BELL, and WRI is available at: www.BELLinnovation.org. Case Overview Tom Harge’s challenge was to “expand the playing field” in emerging markets with a range of affordable, durable, and easyto-produce sports shoes that could effectively reach the huge untapped segment in “Tier Three” countries.
A&G Advertising: Allen and Gerristen, operates as an independent advertising agency. This agency is unique because it specializes in combing technology, creative, media, and analytics to create a variety of digital, experimental and traditional marketing and promotional campaigns for its clients. For the most part, A&G serves business to business clients in areas such as retail, restaurants technology, finance, entertainment, non-profit and healthcare. PART 1 MARKET SEGMENTATION AND CUSTOMER MOTIVATIONS REEBOK: The earliest years of Reebok, the main focus of the brand was for athletes looking for quality sportswear that served functionality. Reebok was for the athlete who wanted to do better and be better than who they already are, unlike their competitors NIKE who focus primarily on team like sports.
Nike sells quality athletic shoes and workout accessories; the packaging for Nike products can vary, due to the wide range of products offered. The Nike swoosh logo is what makes their product recognizable. When the logo was created it was mean to represent the wing of a Greek Goddess, to match the name Nike. The colors most commonly found on Nike packaging is black, orange and white; the shoe boxes are most distinct with this color combination. Along with a recognizable logo and slogan, Nike has a long list of well-known athletes to promote the brand.
Running Head: Nike Inc., 1 NIKE INCORPORATION Mini Case Week 2 Advanced Managerial Finance: FIN 516 Adrienne Sewell Nike Inc., 2 Nike Incorporation Nike Inc., is an American multinational corporation that is engaged in design, development, manufacturing and worldwide marketing and selling of footwear, apparel, equipment, accessories and services. The company is headquartered near Beaverton, Oregon, in the Portland metropolitan area. It is one of the world’s largest suppliers of athletic shoes and apparel and a major manufacturer of sports equipment, with revenue in excess of US$24.1 billion in its fiscal year 2012. In addition, Nike Inc., sells sports apparel and accessories and markets apparel with licensed college and professional teams and league logos. Nike Inc., sells its solutions to footwear stores sporting goods stores athletic specialty stores department stores, skate, tennis and golf shops other retail accounts through Nike owned retail stores and internet websites and a mix of independent distributors and licenses.
Name three players on the U.S. team. Zusi, Howard, and Dempsey 12. How far did the U.S. team make it in the 2010 games? Has the U.S. team ever won the World Cup? The U.S. made it to the round of 16 where they were knocked out by Ghana.
• Summary The UEFA Champions League is the premium European club soccer competition; some say it’s even bigger that the FIFA world cup as a soccer clubs success is measured by the number of champions league titles they have , any soccer fan knows that you can watch soccer at its highest level during this games and that is why companies try to do their best promoting their products during these games and what makes this event so special is that UEFA champions league as it name suggests is a league which goes on for 9 straight months, which makes an amazing opportunity for companies to promote their products. Television channels that have the right to stream the games also make a lot of profit from advertising during the games as 150 million people watched last year’s final, which is a lot more that the number of people who watched the super bowl that very same year. Ford Motors is one of the six main sponsors along Heineken, MasterCard, UniCredit, PlayStation and Gazprom. By sponsoring such an event Ford is able to directly reach its target customers for 9 straight months every year. Since a large percentage of Fords potential customers in Europe are soccer fans and it’s likely that they watch the UEFA Champions League.
Production happens in mainland China in a factory owned by a Taiwanese. Some components come from Japan and Indonesia, and the design and marketing come, of course, comes from America (Pervez, 2009). Global interdependence has not only shaped the way Nike produces its goods but also how they promote them. During international events like the Olympics, Nike’s high cost advertisement is seen throughout. Nike is also a ubiquitous sponsor of huge international events such as soccer's World Cup (Pervez, 2009).
“The Halo Effect” The “halo effect” is the idea that when the overall population sees a product on or used by a celebrity, they will be more inclined to purchase the product because they want to mimic there role model. For years, sporting companies have used this belief, by using athletes to sell there products to fans. A perfect example would be Under Amour’s latest commercial, entitled “Footsteps” using star athletes like Cam Newton and elite track and field runner Monica Hargrove. As the athletes train hard the camera zooms in on the athlete’s shoes promoting their signature Charge RC shoes. Companies like Gatorade, Nike, and Under Armour place their products on athletes to increase the sales of their merchandise.
Question #1: Sourcing Headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, Nike, Inc. has become the largest supplier of athletic shoes, apparel and sporting equipment in the world. In 2012, Nike reported revenue of approximately $24.13 billion dollars (Schulz, n.d). Nike’s sourcing strategy has traditionally been characterized as vertical disintegration through the practice of outsourcing their manufacturing activities to independent factory owners in foreign countries (Collins, 2010). Outsourcing allows Nike to focus on their core competencies such as marketing and product development (Mongelluzzo, 2002). Nike creates the manufacturing designs and specifications, and their suppliers follow them through the production process.
As the theoretical definition states – this type of knowledge is context specific. In this case we are shown many other types of tacit knowledge that helped the development of Nike. These include the movement of its original manufacturing processes to Taiwan and Korea, where Knight knew he could cut costs and increase profits. Also, in a later phase of Nike, his knowledge of competition behavior, as well as the way in which he would battle competitors by increasing innovation. Although these were important examples of tacit knowledge that helped Nike grow, we are able to see the importance of this type of knowledge in relation to explicit knowledge by concluding that what really lifted Nike to the limelight was its marketing strategies by sponsoring football teams as well as using Michael Jordan as its main icon.