Research
on Nike Corporation

Nike is
an American corporation that is involved in the manufacturing, design and
development of different sports products like footwear, apparel, and equipment.
It is headquartered near Beaverton, Oregon in the Portland metropolitan area. The
company was initially founded as Blue Ribbon Sports and then officially became
Nike, Inc. in 1971(O’Reilly,
2014). The organization is the largest seller of athletic footwear and
apparel in the world. All of Nike’s production is manufactured outside the US.
Nike uses a marketing strategy to be competitive in the industry, to try and continue
being the top dog in the industry. The firm places a significant weight on
marketing of the company and its products. Besides selling sports attire and
accessories, Nike is also involved in the sale of sports-inspired lifestyle products
like bags, eyewear, sports balls, basic sports equipment, etc. The company
sponsors many sport teams and athletes around the world by trademarks of Swoosh
and “Just Do It” logo. To remain competitive, the firm involves
celebrity athletes from the NFL, MLB, NBA, etc.. In order to remain dominance
in the industry, the corporation actively responds to the changes in consumer
preferences by developing new products according to customer’s needs, hear
about, and ideas from other products that they may not have yet. The areas of
marketing are of those that are popular to viewers.  These consist of social media advertisement,
TV, and magazines.  Nike tries to compete
with times and stay with times through technology Etter, 2015). The corporation
faces tough competition with its main competitors like Adidas and Reebok but
continue to lead the pack. Today I will be talking about Nikes strategic ways
of staying and remaining competitive in today’s competition.

 

 

Competitive Strategy

Nike
Corporation provides touch screen objects in the stores, which allow customers
to design shoes of personal choice. At the same time, the company
provides different options like great product quality, product innovation, and
customer satisfaction, which help in maintaining its image in the market. The
marketing capability of celebrity endorsement has been the core competency of
Nike. The organization uses IT for better inventory turnover ratio. When it comes to textbook
strategies Nike focuses on the cost leadership strategy and differentiation
strategy. The company aims to keep costs at a minimum to maximize
profitability, while producing unique products (Gregory, 2017).

 

Porter’s
Five Force Analysis

Porter’s
Five Force Analysis is a simple and powerful tool for understanding the
strength and advantages of an organization. The approach also brings to light
the strength of competitors.

Figure
1. Porter’s five force analysis

Rivalry implies that Nike
faces a tough competition from other brands like Reebok. The threat of substitute is low as
there are no alternatives because athletic footwear is used for any sporty
events. The threat of new entrants is
low as Nike is a globally recognized brand, which provides the best
performances involving athletes. The company continues to lead innovation in
footwear and apparel. The power of
suppliers is low as the suppliers are dependent on the firms like Nike
and Adidas as their means of earning. The
power of buyers is increased as Nike products are good quality but the
prices for them are high. So, there are other brands of sport footwear
available, which products are good and prices are low. Therefore, bargaining
power of buyers is high.

The
supply chain management, enterprise resource planning, and customer
relationship are an integral part of any organization. By 2004, the company possessed
successful supply chain management system indicating its planning and
production. Nike’s single instance strategy became the pattern for the
companies implementing ERP software. The objective of the firm is customer
satisfaction. Nike applies methods like DIFOT (Delivery in full on time) to
provide expanded customer queries. Nike’s business model consists of four
elements: customer value proposition; profit formula; key resources; key processes. The company represents high customer value proposition as
it delivers the most efficient products with the best athletes’ performance.
Nike removes access barrier by providing products in stores as well as online. The
company also supplies the products faster and thus removing the time barrier. The
quality of products is high.

Use of
Database System

Nike’s
market value is high as compared to other sport and apparel industry due to a
large market share. Nike’s objective is to build datacenter cloud and network
infrastructure. This step should be provided to meet changing business and
customer needs. The sportswear brand will serve as the basis for virtualizing
multiple datacenters around the world. Its sport brand has more than 18
datacenters globally. Jupiter will provide Nike with scalable and accurate
network.

Agent based technologies

The five
agent-based technologies that can be used within an organization are autonomous
agent, distributed agent, mobile agent, intelligent agent, multi-agent system. Nike sells its products like sportswear and apparel both
in store and online. So this is a part of intelligent agent domain.

E-commerce
business models

E-commerce
business models are as follows: business
to business, business
to consumer, consumer
to consumer, consumer
to business, business
to government, government
to business, government
to citizen. Using these e-commerce models, the organization can get a
significant market share and become more popular. In business-to-business model
the company can sell its products to intermediate buyers who then sell the
products to final customer. In B2C model, Nike sells its products directly to
the customer. The clients can view the products of the corporation online
through a website. In B2G model, government to trade with various business
organizations uses the web sites. In G2B model, the government uses websites to
approach business organizations. So, e-commerce
models are pretty valuable for an organization since they help in increasing
the revenue and turnover of the firm.

Benefits
of Software Development Life Cycle

System
development lifecycle is the process of developing software from requirement analysis
to implementation and maintenance stages. The procedure involves the following
steps:

Generating requirements: All
the demands are collected. Analysis:
Requirements are analyzed according to user needs. Design: The process of describing the desired features and
operation of the system. Development: Taking
the detailed design and transferring it to the actual system. Testing: Checking for any bugs. Implementation: The system is developed
and maintenance is performed.

The product
lifecycle concept is based on a strategy of marketing its products. The
lifecycle controls the development environment and helps produce a high-quality
result. Organizations like Nike and Adidas use some stages called as system
development lifecycle to generate the software system. Every organization has
its own lifecycle. If the system is not proper then it can be improved. If
lifecycle is iterative then phases get repeated until product developed gets
acceptable.

Business
Continuity Planning

There
are other models also like the spiral. The need for business continuity
planning has grown rapidly in the 21st century. Hence, the organization tries
to minimize the risk of service disruption and maximize business continuity,
which is very important for the overall success of an organization. From this
perspective, the resources are identified to support business continuity.

Business
Continuity Planning Organization

The process
is started by a senior management committee, which considers initiating the
necessary steps, planning, implementation, testing, and auditing the plan.

Business
Impact Analysis

The
critical business issues are identified at internal and external level. This measure
initiates the prioritization of business services and measures how long the
business can operate without certain services. The stage is instrumental in
identifying the services which contribute the most. Then detailed response and
recovery plan are prepared and the further training is provided. The quality
assurance is ultimate step.

Nike’s
Use of Technology

Nike
uses the latest technologies to become a successful brand in the market. The
company uses web for social media advertising. The Nike’s Facebook account is
provided as well. The corporation has launched a new gadget that tracks and
keeps the record of all everyday activities. Nike uses the latest technology in
its products, for example the product Nike + iPod, which allows the consumer to
connect their iPod devices to sensors inside shoes which record time, distance,
and calories burned. This product consists of the small sensor that fits under
the pads of Nike’s sneaker. The RFID powered device from Nike makes it easy for
stalkers and corporations to track movement. The RFID device fits into the
soles of Nike’s shoes which gives runner real-time updates of their workouts.

Nike’s
Security Measures

The Nike
digital privacy policy describes the way information is collected and used.
Nike gathers data regarding customer’s interaction and use of products and
services. The corporation applies the variety of security approaches like
encryption and authentication. At the same time, the company uses secure
servers. All credit card information is transmitted through SSL technology and encryption
within its database (Liebelson, 2017).