The Nike Corporation is an American multinational corporation that is engaged in the design, development, manufacturing, and worldwide marketing and selling of footwear, apparel, equipment, accessories, and services. Nike’s revenue for 2014 was listed as $28 billion USD. Nike has been the official shoe sponsor for many high-profile professional athletes from different sports including Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Maria Sharapova, Kobe Bryant, Roger Federer and Tiger Woods.
Nike is the world’s largest supplier of athletic shoes and apparel and a major manufacturer of sports equipment. The company was founded on January 25th 1964 by Bill Bowerman (inventor of Nike trainers) and Phil Knight (University of Oregon runner and now Nike Chairman). Nike is headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon. The Nike Corporation purchased Converse in 2003 for $305 million dollars which expanded Nike’s footwear line into a wide variety of sports and styles including running, training, soccer, golf and many others.
Nike has many subsidiaries that have been acquired over the last few years including Hurley International which is Nike’s action sports subsidiary company. Nike has become a very large company over the last half century, but maintains its core values of inspiring every athlete to be their best. Nike also has long term goals to improve conditions for workers in their factories around the world by providing more healthy working conditions and paying higher wages.
Nike Corporation provides an interesting case study for students who are taking courses that require them to write business plans or essays on Nike’s growing global presence. Students can choose Nike as an example of how proper branding strategy brings success in the marketplace. Many students find it helpful to read up on Nike’s marketing strategies before writing about their successes or failures in order to get a better understanding of what Nike does right so they can incorporate Nike’s innovative marketing ideas in their own work.
Many students also find Nike a good case study in terms of how Nike manages to maintain a very strong brand identity despite being found in almost every country around the world and being associated with so many different athletes from different sports. Nike is a great example for students who have been asked to write essays about Nike because it provides so much information for writers to use when they are writing about Nike’s success or failure depending on what side of Nike they choose to look at.
The Nike Corporation was founded in 1964 by Phil Knight. Nike has grown to become one of the biggest corporations in the world, but still holds its original values close to heart.
Since Nike’s initial success, they have outfitted tons of famous athletes with Nike branded shoes and apparel, including Michael Jordan in his prime during the 1986/87 season when he scored an average of 35 points per game (ppg) and led his team, the Chicago Bulls, to go 72-10 for the regular season. That season would also be known as “The Air Jordan Season”, where Nike released a shoe named after their basketball star; The Air Jordan 1s.
This is considered Nike’s most successful shoe release (and overall release) with over 80 million pairs sold. Nike is the sole sponsor of the Jordan Brand, which features some of Nike’s biggest names including Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. Nike has also had great success with signing on athletes such as Roger Federer (tennis), Tiger Woods (golf), Tom Brady (football) and many more.
Nike recently announced that Michael Jordan will be stepping down as head of Basketball Operations at Nike/Jordan brand for a new role as “Global Basketball Ambassador”. This means his focus will shift to growing Nike Basketball globally while working together with Nike’s existing top brass team; President & CEO, Mark Parker; COO & CFO, Andy Campion; SVP & GM, NBA Basketball, Gentry Humphrey; VP Merchandising, Michael Spillane; and VP Global Brand Nike, Trevor Edwards.
Nike has been working on restructuring its company for some time now as Nike Brand President & SVP, Charlie Denson said Nike’s 2013 profits were at it’s the lowest in over a decade during Nike’s fiscal Q3 earnings report. Nike is trying to focus on new product categories by introducing Nike Plus and Nike Fuel Band (a wearable activity tracker).
Nike also wants to strengthen its digital presence with Nike launching a new e-commerce site and social media updates that’s integrated into the site.
Nike’s success comes through many different factors (which will be explained later). The first one being marketing/distribution strategy. Nike distributes its products globally to wholesalers, retailers, and directly to consumers through Nike stores. For marketing, Nike uses several different techniques such as product placement in movies, Nike endorsements of athletes, Nike sponsorships of different events and programs, Nike commercials, Nike print media ads, Nike social media promotions/contests, Nike sampling to the public at events and stores. The second factor that affects Nike’s success is a dynamic organizational culture.
Nike operates in a fast-paced changing environment that demands flexibility. Because of this Nike has developed an atmosphere where change is expected and welcomed. This creates a positive work environment which makes employees want to come to work every day so they can be themselves and contribute their skills to further help the company grow. In the same way Nike fosters creativity through its innovative nature because even though there are processes in place for everyone to follow it does not stop them from creating new ideas and experimenting with them.
Nike maintains a good balance between centralization and decentralization. Nike has a main headquarters but Nike does not let HQ make all of the decisions for its many brands because that would be too much power in one place which could then cause problems. Nike also uses information technology to help it stay organized. Nike holds global summits where members from all different Nike companies come to talk about what they have been working on, possible problems they may have encountered, and new innovations they have found or created.
Nike’s other important factor is a strong culture which is essentially their internal value system. Nike wants people who work for them to put Nike first before anything else because if Nike succeeds other things will follow Some examples of Nike’s internal value system are Nike Citizenship, Nike Management Model [as explained in detail later], Nike [In]Courage [as also explained in detail below], Nike values, Nike’s business practices , Nike’s philosophy of doing business, and Nike’s management style.
In order to keep its customers, happy Nike has a strong brand which is well known for it quality, trendiness, varied choice options, etc. One way Nike keeps customers satisfied is through the Nike swoosh. The Swoosh represents creativity and all things athletic. It means that you can do anything whether it be in sports or everyday life because with hard work anything can be accomplished.
Many companies have been successful because they have created their own logos which identifies them from other companies, Nike has done this too. Nike’s company culture is about encouraging employees to be creative with their work and Nike does not want that creativity to stop at the end of each shift. Nike wants its customers, next generations coming up in society, and the entire population of the world thinking Nike all around because it means empowerment, strength, hard work can pay off, etc.
