Athletic Shoe and Nike

Nike, Inc. is an American multinational corporation that is engaged in the design, development 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 the world 's leading supplier 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 (ending May 31, 2012). As of 2012, it employed more than 44,000 people worldwide. The brand alone is valued at $10.7 Billion making it the most valuable brand among sports businesses. Nike and Precision Castparts are the only Fortune

The current image of Nike is of a brand which provides goods of all ages for people who are athletic or sporty and have a casual lifestyle with fashionable taste. Their main items for selling are sporting goods of all types which include shoes, shirts etc. however, another image of Nike is that it fulfills the self esteem needs of the buyer as Nike products are not cheap and not all classes of people can afford them. Also Nike is often preferred over other brands as it

Obviously, there is a big number of driving forces in the athletic footwear industry. Each of these driving forces has different impacts—some of them can have a more considerable effect than others on figuring out how much cross-company differences influence market shares and a number of units sold. The first line of most influential factors includes comparative prices, S/Q ratings, and a number of models offered among the footwear competitors. These three most important competitive forces affect customer decisions of which athletic footwear brand to choose. Furthermore, the decisions of customers whether to purchase one brand or another are also influenced by such forces as advertising, celebrity endorsements, the number of independent retail

The company has launched the Nike products, which embody a love of sport, discipline, ambition, practice, and other athletic traits.

Nike is the leading and yet renowned supplier of athletic apparel and shoes. The company controls close to 33% of the global athletic shoe market (Dogiamis & Vijayashanker,2009).Nike was founded by Bill Power and Phil Knight in 1962 as a Blue Ribbon Support and then was later on renamed to Nike in the year 1968 (Patrow,2003).The company supplies very high quality product in close to 100 countries with major markets being located in the U.S,U,K, Asia Pacific as well as in the Americas. The company has managed to attain its lead and legendary position via the application of innovative and yet attractive product design which is backed by quality production as well as well crafted marketing strategies.

Phil Knight - Jake Rakestraw Phil Knight is the Co-Founder and former CEO and chairman of the most successful shoe company in the world, Nike. Knight was a college runner at the University of Oregon, which is where his infatuation with shoes began. Knight’s coach, and another Co-Founder of Nike, Bill Bowerman, was notorious for trying out different pairs of homemade track shoes on his athletes, more specifically Knight himself. After college, Knight feared that he would be your average 9-5 accountant working for some retail agency. The thought of that was enough to keep him up at night.

6). This strategy is a major component of Nike’s business strategic level plan. In applying this strategy, Nike has attained a great deal of consumer insight, which it uses to offer uniquely designed premium products to the athletes. Still on product differentiation, Nike focuses more on research and development at a greater level. These unique features to Nike, have transformed the competition levels in this competitive industry, leading to a trend of a paradigm shift in the market. Most consumers opt for Nike branded sports products and apparels, at the expense of the other brand names.

Nike subcontracts the production process of its footwear to 900 contract factories located worldwide with Asian developing countries such as China, Indonesia and Vietnam accounting for the bulk of total world production. Production of the footwear is based on a vertically integrated model. In the primary stage, raw materials such as rubber, leather and plastic are extracted from places located in close proximity from the factories. In the secondary stage, the extracted resources are sent to the factories or “Sweatshops” for manufacturing. It should be noted that the whole production process of Nike footwear are being carried out by independent private contractors.

Nike is now one of the biggest and most recognizable brands in the world is largely due to Phil Knight who transformed Nike into a global powerhouse, known both for its successes and its controversies. In the process he turned athletic footwear into fashion. In the article titled, "How Nike Turned Running Shoes into Fashion," the author talks about how Knight used marketing as a strategy to advertise the most practical of footwear, as fashion. Sneakers started as luxury items in the 1890s when the first rubber-soled athletic shoes debuted in the U.S.

The athletic shoe industry is made up of companies that produce footwear for athletic use. This is a strong industry and has been around for over 100 years. The athletic shoe industry is one of the fastest growing footwear industries and have top growing sales compared to other footwear industries (NDP Group, 2016). The key players that currently dominate the market are Nike, Adidas, and Puma (Kates & Bolduc, 2013). This paper will use the porter five forces, industry life cycle, and the key players to understand the industry. Over these years the athletic shoe industry has grown into a competitive market.

Nike has seldom manufactured products own premises, except their air bladders. The shoes are manufactured through outsourcing and alliances with other companies. A successful company like Nike formed its organization on the customer values that have the MOST impact on the consumers mind – Design/R&D, Marketing and Distribution. Even though manufacturing is a vital function to perform, Nike realized that there were other ways to go about this function and thereby save both cost and maintain its focus on the critical customer value areas.

Phil started Nike all because of his interest in athletics. He wanted to improve the design of Tigers (Ribbon Sports, first shoes) and do more than sell shoes of other brands. Phil’s interest in athletics made him very successful. His small business of selling shoes in college turned into Nike one of the most popular sports brands today. In 1993 Phil Knight was voted “the most powerful person in sports”, what amazes me is that he isn’t even an athlete, or team manager, he is just a very popular icon for sports. It’s unbelieveable how an interest as simple as sports made Phil Knight the man he is today.

The athletic footwear industry includes all producers of shoes designed in an athletic style or for an athletic use. We define the active footwear industry as an industry that manufactures shoes for active lifestyles. The primary focus of this analysis is on the United States market as it represents roughly 32% of the overall footwear market (PRWeb,

Nike began as Phil Knight’s semester-long project to develop a small business, which included a marketing plan. This project was part of Phil Knight’s MBA course at Stanford University in the early 1960s. Phil Knight had been a runner at the University of Oregon in the late 1950s. His idea for his project was to develop high quality running shoes. He thought that high quality/low cost products could be produced in Japan and then shipped to the United States to be sold at a profit. His professor thought that Knight’s idea was interesting, but not much more than a project.

Before Nike came into existence Nike's brand was conceptualized at the University of Oregon .at university bill Bowerman was knights track coach.. After his running days were over at university knight enrolled at the prestigious Stanford business school for his master's degree in finance. Whilst