Introduction:

The article takes us through the journey of Nike Inc. as a company selling

sneakers out of back of a car three decades ago, to an iconic sports brand. They

achieved this over a period of time. They faced ups and downs created due to their

dependency on intuitions but stabilised by being market oriented.

Extent of Market Orientation:

To determine the extent to which Nike is market oriented, we will first go

through the meaning of the term market orientation. A.K. Kohli and B.J. Jaworski,

define it as organisationwide generation of market intelligence pertaining to current

and future needs of customers disseminating of the intelligence across departments

and organisationwide responsiveness to it for profit generation and increase in

business performance.

Creative blood always runs in veins of Nike. It is their culture. But as observed

in the past few years they have incorporated detailed system of running business by

developing top flying I.T. systems, logistics and supply chain management.

Overhauled computer systems to get right number of sneakers to wider geography

with just on-time production show their market orientation in terms of profit

generation. As they already had creative rigour, now they have found a perfect

balance between the creative and business faces of its platinum coin. This makes

them more market oriented culturally and in processes respectively. They also

showed quality market orientation by changing exactly according to the turbulence of

technology. The decision of putting together a new executive team consisting of two

insiders carrying heritage and culture of Nike’s early years with two key players from

outside Nike and industry in 2001 was a very market oriented step as it changed the

centralization and departmentalization leading to its own benefits.

The failure of W.D. Perez as Nike’s chairman was a jerk. The reason was

partially the failure to judge the right person and then poor communication and

conflicts inside the organization. This was the only time in past few years leaving a

negatively market oriented sign on the face of the global sports fashion trend setter.

Otherwise it has been very market oriented in all senses.

Nike’s new product portfolio and strategic brand management strategies:

The new product portfolio of Nike show’s that it is not just the trend setting

sneaker brand anymore. It is definitely famous for its products like Monsterfly, Air

Zoom Miller, Air Jordan, Total 90III and others, but presently sports fashion is their

Individual task - Mock Exercise

Market Orientation (cultural and process), new product portfolio and strategic

brand management strategies of Nike Inc. based on the case study from source -

Stanley Holmes,

“Inside the Coup at Nike”, Business week, February 6, 2006, 34-37.

core business arena. They made acquisition of various brands like Cole Hann – a

dress and casual shoes maker. After they gave their sub-brand some room to be

natural, it generated great revenues. They have mastered brand management. Their

other successful acquisitions like Hurley International, Bauer and Converse (a huge

hit) prove it. Acquisitions were targeted for achieving high financial growth and

product addition to portfolio.

Nike has in testing a high tech shoe Nike Free and upgrading their Shox

technology battling with the competition faced by other brands. They had a vision of

soccer in Europe as their next big thing. They paid big amounts to the favourite club

of masses, Man. Utd. for merchandising products. Nike’s latest soccer shoe

Mercurial Vapour is no.1 in Europe.

They used matrix structure to distribute the organizations internal managerial

responsibility into regions and products which also keeps an eye on amount spent in

brand promotion, endorsement and sponsorship. Brand expansion, market

penetration and globalizing marketing are their strategies.

I would not recommend changes but would suggest Nike to consider sports

accessories like watches, swimming glasses, drink shakers, footballs, gloves and

lots of similar items as a potential area of business.

References:

Journal of Marketing, 1-18, Vol 54 (April 1990), Ajay K. Kohli & Bernard J. Jaworski.

“Inside the Coup at Nike”, Business week, February 6, 2006, 34-3, Stanley Holmes.

www.tutor2u.net/business/presentations/strategy/ansoff/default.htm.