Nike Assignment 2022

Running head: NIKE 1
Nike
Name
Institution

NIKE 2
NIKE
Background of the company
Nike is an American multicultural company formed in 1968. The company specializes in
the design, development, global marketing, and selling of apparel, footwear, equipment, and
accessories. The company headquarter is located near Beaverton Oregon. Nike is among the
world’s largest suppliers of athletic apparel and shoes, and also the main manufacturer of sports
equipment. The company opened its first store in 1966 and launched its brand shoe in 1972. Nike
started expanding slowly from the late 1980s and diversified its line of production through
various acquisitions such as the Cole Haan shoe company. The company engages in a broad
range of sports equipment. Nike’s first product was running shoes. However, it is currently
making shoes, shorts, jerseys, tennis, ice hockey, lacrosse, cricket, and basketball. Nike
introduced the Air Jordan XX3 in 2008 which was a high-performance basketball shoe
specifically designed with the environment in mind. Nonetheless, the firm has contracted with
over seven thousand shops across the globe and has stations located in 45 nations outside
America. Most of the factories are situated in Asia, including China, Indonesia, Thailand,
Taiwan, Malaysia, and Vietnam.
Nike’s Business Strategy
For a company to achieve higher profit and thrive over its rivals, it should implement a
business strategy that is different from that of its competitors. The first business strategy applied
by Nike is product differentiation. The company emphasizes the major elements such as
branding, designing products, advertising, exclusive customer service, new products, and high-
quality goods. Product differentiation assists organizations to raise their profits by selling
different products across its market. Additionally, producing several product lines assists in

NIKE 3
reducing risk in case one product fails. Initially, the company had designed its products only for
athletic purposes (Pratap, 2019). However, the company later diversified its line of products
since a higher percentage of its sales originated from accessories, footwear, and leisure products.
The company differentiates its products in several ways. First, the organization manufactures
sports goods for three types of people; children, women, and men. The customer care segments
of each group of people are carefully analyzed based on design preference, psychological needs,
and trend choices. Secondly, the company differentiates its commodities by providing a variety
of apparels and foot ware such as Nike watches, sports balls, gym bags, glasses, and skates.
IT/IS Strategy of Nike
Due to high competition from its competitors such as Adidas, the firm had to come up
with an information technology strategy that will assist in marketing and selling its products. The
company adopted various information technology and control systems. The company adopted the
systems, applications, and products software systems to assist them in understanding the
customers better. More so, the SAP software assists the company to respond to changes and
trends in the market (Gerow, Thatcher, & Grover, 2015). SAP is a business software that assists
any company or business to manage business operations and customer relations. Another
information technology strategy of Nike is working with the Siemens IT solutions and services to
provide outsourcing services for the company. This includes service desk, global management
program, assets management, and desk-side support. The company applied this business strategy
to improve its product availability. The organization also uses computer service technology
which provides financing, accounting, and IT outsourcing such as customer care and human
resource. The company aimed to strengthen its customers’ relationships and provide them with
exciting products. This IT service has assisted it to structure support for their business globally,