Nike Narrative

Nike is an international company that has over 1100 retail stores worldwide, employs over 70,000 people, and serves as hte world leader in athletic footwear and apparel. Nike has acquired many footwear and clothing companies over the years including, but not limited to,  Cole Haan, Bauer Hockey, Converse, Hurley International, Starter and Umbro. Nike's international strategy is its effective worldwide marketing campaign.s With this the company creates sponsorship agreements with the world's top sportteams, athleters, celecrities, and college athletic programs as well. They give these groups tons of nike branded equiptment, gear, and technology to promote their brand and serve as the most visible sporting good company in the wrold. https://www.statista.com/statistics/250287/total-number-of-nike-retail-stores-worldwide/

Nike has entered into a number of significant mergers and acquisitions over the years. Some of the most notable include its acquisition of Zodiac, Invertex, and Converse. Mergers come in many forms. They can be vertical, horizontal, means of extending the market, conglomerate, or ways to extend the product. In its merger history, we can see Nike entering merger agreements with its own distributors and suppliers, which would be vertical and backwards vertical integration mergers. Nike is always very strategic with its mergers whether they are merging with a competitor or entering a merger to enter into a new market or take ownership of a product innovation. 

Nike formed a Strategic alliance with Apollo Global management in order to shift its apparel supply chain to a more vertically integrated model in the Americas. This partnerhsip will increase regional manufacturing capabilities, and decrease delivery times to consumers. The company acquired new apparel and textile suppliers to achieve this as well as broaden and diversify its offerings and abilities. https://news.nike.com/strategic-partnerships

Nike's organization structure is divided geographically. Since Nike is a global company, this structure helps it effectively manage its international and domestic markets. The company has global corporate leadership as well as semi-autonomous geographic divisions. This model has benefits as well as drawbacks. The benefits are that this model helps to foster growth and stability as the global leadership can manage and control the entire organization, but the semi autonomous division enjoy the flexibility that comes with smaller scale regional management and consumer tailoring. A drawback, however, is some limits when managing the company's large subsets of the company such as Converse. http://panmore.com/nike-inc-organizational-structure-characteristics-analysis

Diversification is critical for companies that have obtained success in particular industry and are looking to  grow, expand, and avoid stagnation. A company that is Nike's size, is expected to have diverse production  offerings. While Nike functions in the sporting goods industry, it does not just offer one type of sporting good such as apparel or equipment. Nike offers a diverse spread of goods to its consumer. industry is sporting goods, it offers so many different types of sporting goods from sports equiptment, to fitness bands, to water bottles, apparel ,and so much more. No matter the product, Nike's strategy is to market all of its products as the best in the business. This diverse product offering allows Nike to  avoid putting all its eggs in one basket in case a division of its company fails or declines significantly. It has a lot of other profitable options to turn to for revenue if the time came. https://www.scribd.com/doc/242601885/Diversification-Strategy-of-Nik

Vertical integration is the number of stages in a product or service's value chain in which a particular firm engages.In 2016, Nike partnered with Apollo Global Management to establish a new supply chain for their apparel division.With the guidance of Apollo the plan was to invest in suppliers and acquire additional textile and apparel firms in hopes creating a more vertically integrated supply chain. With this new model, they project to see an improvement in product capabilities and delivery times.  https://www.cips.org/en/supply-management/news/2016/august/nike-announced-supply-chain-strategic-partnership/

Collusion is defined by the text as existing when firms in an industry agree to coordinate their strategic choices in order to reduce competition in an industry. It can result when firms collaborate on output and pricing decisions. Collusion can be seen in multiple industries and companies can even collude against particular individuals. For example, the NFL is accused of colluding to not give Colin Kaepernick a contract in the league because he chose to protest against police brutality against unarmed black men by kneeling during the national anthem. He began this protest in 2016, and has been out of work ever since. That is, until Nike, in its familiar controversial fashion revealed Mr. Kaepernick as the face of their ne w  major marketing campaign  honoring the 30th anniversary of its iconic “Just Do It” slogan. Kaepernick has sued the NFL and hope to receive justice if collusion is found to be at play. I think it's honorable that Nike stand with Colin Kaepernick in his effort t

Chapter 8 expounded upon the roles that flexibility as a strategic option for firms. Base don risk and strategic analysis, flexibility is important when it comes to a firm making strategic decision when dealing with ambiguity or uncertainty. Flexibility is defined as the ability to change direction quickly and at a low cost, if unexpected changes in the competitive landscape arise in the industry a firm is operating. Due to Nike's size, its flexibility is limited. Am abundance of resources, time, and materials back each decision the company pursues. If something were to suddenly change the would have trouble reacting to the change in a low cost and efficient matter. It would take a lot of moving parts to redirect. In Nike's case, what it lacks in flexibility it must make up for in forecasting and prediciton of indutry fluctuations. Nike must always stay 5 steps ahead of the competition. http://weartested.org/nike-free-run-2

Product differentiation is present when consumers perceive a certain firm's product to have more value than another firm's product. While their offerings may have very subtle to extreme differences, it all comes down to consumer perception. it's all about standing out from the crown. Niek sets itself apart by offering high quality sportsware that is deemed to  be top of the line or exclusive to only the best athletes. This perception makes consumers willing to pay higher prices because they perceive that they are paying for a higher quality product as a result of the brand name . Nike is considered the standard. They are selling an ability, not just a product. Consumers believe "if you have x Nike product, you will perform better". This strategy is very effective. https://www.cleverism.com/stand-crowd-examples-differentiation/

If a firm chooses a cost leadership strategy, their focus is to gain an advantage over their competitors by reducing economic costs below all of them.Nike's cost leadership is found in their supply chain and production costs. They work with suppliers and manufacturers to help keep these costs low. In their supply chain they focus on low costs, but high reliability. In turn, the sporting good industry leader spares little expense on its marketing and advertising. What they can save in manufacturing they can afford to utilize to improve consumer visibility, awareness, and eventually brand loyalty. https://cwpresly.wordpress.com/2016/09/26/chapter-6-cost-leadership/

The text defines distinctive competency as the activities that a particular firm does better than any other competing firm. As Nike is the leader in the sporting goods industry, it is not challenging to definite the company's distinctive competencies. these are the things that set Nike apart from every other sporting good company. Nike's disincentive competencies rest in its marketing and its brand recognition and power. It's slogan just do it and the extremely recognizable Nike Swoosh, in tandum with its top of the line athletes that partner with the brand, all serve as characteristics that make Nike distinct from its competition. These characteristics are also not easy to duplicate and serve almost as the company's unique fingerprints or signatures. They company's slogan and log are recognizable and consumers greatly identify their purchases with top of the line athletic greatness. http://condor.depaul.edu/aalmaney/StrategicAnalysisofNike.htm

First mover advantages are benefits that come to companies that make critical strategic and technological decisions early in the developmental phases of an industry,  This can help said firm control the industry and set the rules of how  the game will be played. These advantages typically come firm technological leadership, preemption of strategically valuable asses, and the creation of customer switching costs. Nike has been the first-move in the sports industry for decades. The company takes the lead when it comes to technological leadership. Some examples of its innovation include e " Dri-Fit and sustainable materials in apparel, and Free, Lunar, and Flywire technology in footwear being integrated across all platforms." With innovations such as these, Nike will continue to dominate the market and experience first-mover advantages. https://www.investors.com/news/continued-innovation-seen-lifting-nike/

I thought the was Case #1, but its actually not! Freebie! Environmental Threats! Chapter 3 – Evaluating Environmental Threats Chapter 3 discusses several models utilized to analyze a firm’s internal and external environment as a strategy to develop and maintain competitive advantage. The external analyses allows a firm to review its opportunities and threats, while the internal analyses analyze its individual strengths and weaknesses. In the 1960s and 1970s, this tool became known as a firm’s SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis. The Structure-Conduct-Performance Model, developed in the 1930s to understand the relationship between a firm’s environment, behavior, and performance, preceded the SWOT analysis. In this model, the structure of the industry determines a firm’s conduct as well as their performance. The third model and primary focus of this chapter is Porter’s five Forces Model. This model focuses on pointing out environmental threats and gives

Michael Porter created the most influential tool for firm to evaluate their environment or external threat.s It is called the port's Five Forces Model. They include the t hreat of rivalry, entry, substitutes, suppliers, and buyers. Nike's greatest threats come from rivalry or competition. Companies such as Adidas, Under Armour and Reebok serve as a few of Nike's primary competitors. These companies have similar product offerings and serve as Nike's greatest threat. The threat of buyers and substitutes both serve as moderate threats to Nike. While buyer's do have the option to purchase other brands, truly comparable substitutes are only moderately available. Hence why the threat of substitutions is also moderate. While substitutions do exist, they're performance level doesn't quite compare. The bargaining power of suppliers and new entrants are both fairly weak because suppliers are abundant and therefore don't have a lot of bargaining power, and Nike pos

Competitive advantage is when a firm is able to create more economic value than its rival or competitor firms. Economic value is simply defined as the difference between the benefits and the cost a customer received when purchasing a firm's products or services. When I think competitive I think competition, competitor, athlete, and the Nike! Nike partners with the top athletes in the sports industry and is known for their superior quality products and high end brand. According to  Panos Mourdoukoutas of Forbes magazine, Nike's competitive advantage can be summed up into 5 categories - the company's brand, scale, scope, customization, and innovation. Nike has a well known and positive image amongst its consumers, its revenues almost double Adidas its closest competitor, it has a broad scope of product offerings in the sporting goods and apparel market, it allows its customers to customize all Nike gear, and the lead the industry in apparel and sporting equipment innovation a

I choose Nike! :) They've recently had a lot of interesting press in the media, and I tihnk they would be very interesting to follow. Just Do it! 

Hello readers and fellow bloggers, My name is Rosalind Cooper, and I have been tasked with developing a blog for my MGMT 7160 class following the happenings of a company of my choosing. As graduation is only three months  away,  I look forward to using this creative outlet to express the business savvy I have accumulated over the course of my studies in pursuit of my Masters of Business Administration.  Happy blogging! -Roz