Assignment: Nike's Marketing Copy

Assignment 2: Marketing
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Assignment 2: Marketing
Question 1: Target Market
Nike, the world’s leading sportswear company, has professional athletes, both young and adults, as its primary target market. The company supplies the athletes with apparel, footwear, and other athletic equipment to facilitate their sporting activities. Women in their early 20s and 30s are also a key target for Nike. The growing desire among women for athletic fashion is the driving force behind the company’s focus on women as its primary target. Besides, women have become enthusiastic about fitness, and Nike serves them with leggings, sports bras, and tights for gym and workouts. Adidas, a fierce Nike competitor, also focuses its marketing strategies on sports enthusiasts and athletes from different sporting activities, with those of ages between 20 and 30 making the largest share of its consumer market. Young athletes of ages bellow 20 have also become a target for Adidas. The notion that the brand's future is dully dependent on the athletes of the future necessitates the emphasis on the younger generation.
Nike uses a differentiated targeting strategy to market its products. According to Armstrong et al. (2017), a differentiated targeting strategy divides the target market into separate segments served with unique products and services. Nike offers a range of products from apparel, footwear, and other sports equipment (Nike News, n.d.). Products become the segmentation variable, reinforced with other variables such as consumer behavior, social classes, and personality. Similarly, Adidas makes use of the differentiated targeting strategy, with demographics, social class, and consumer behavior as the main segmentation variables. Adidas’ subsidiaries that include Reebok, Ashworth, Five Ten Footwear, among others (Adidas, n.d.), attract unique consumer markets, thus becoming a vital segmentation variable.
Question 2: Product Life Cycle
The product lifecycle (PLC) represents the various stages of product development in terms of sales and profits from the time it is made available to the market until it is phased out (Armstrong et al., 2017). A product can be on either of the five PLC stages: introduction, growth, maturity, or decline (Armstrong et al., 2017). Nike’s footwear products, launched in 1972 from a company that existed since 1964, are already in the maturity stage. According to Nike’s annual report for the year 2019, the footwear product sales are at its peak, leading in the revenue production at 61% (Nike Inc, n.d.). Despite the fierce competition from others like Puma, Adidas, and Under Armour, Nike’s footwear products still receive excellent acceptance from both loyal and new consumers. Innovativeness, competitive prices, excellent social media marketing, and the use of celebrity influence help maintain the relevance of its products consequently preventing decline.
Adidas footwear products have been in the market since the inception of the company in 1924. Despite being around the market for quite a very long time, Adidas footwear products are still in their growth phase. The net sales for Adidas products has been on an upward trajectory ever since 2002, ac...