Assignment on Under Armour PDF

Running head: UNDER ARMOUR
Under Armour
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note

1UNDER ARMOUR
Introduction
Background of the study
This research is based on the American company Under Armour, which excels in
manufacturing footwear, casual apparel and sportswear. The company is headquartered in the
Baltimore region and other offices are spread in Amsterdam, Jakarta, London, Mexico city and
others. The company was founded in the year 1996 by former football captain of Mryland
football team, Kevin Plank (Baughman 2018, pp. 133- 134). The business was initially
functioning from the basement of the owner’s grandmother in Washington. The business started
from a grass- root level to give a tough competition n the later days. After Plank was able to set
up his business successfully, his brand started getting tough competition from the existing
companies such as Reebok, Nike and Adidas. The innovation of products in the form of using
moisture- wicking synthetic fabric gave the brand a competitive advantage in the market. The
products started getting popular among the common people and the sports person when the
media started advertising about the same. The company started making new products rapidly
such as ColdGear, TurfGear and others, which gave the company a major break in 1999
(Bohnsack et al. 2016, p. 154). This research proposal will look into the current market of the
company and the problems that it is facing in the recent days.
Problem statement
It is evident from the background study and the market research of the company that this
brand is responsible for doing business in the product category of sportswear, footwear,
accessories and apparels. This sheds light on the fact that the business is conducted only on the
specific group of customers who are sportsperson or related to sports industry. The problem is

2UNDER ARMOUR
faced by the company, as they do not target the common people in general. This has limited their
target population to only a certain section of the society. Moreover, there is tough competition in
the market from the existing brands of Nike, Adidas and Reebok. The customers have a tendency
to trust on the older brands rather than a new brand. The issue has become more prominent
because the company conducts their business on an international level and the lack in their
operation is hampering their sale in the global market too. The problem will take a worse shape if
it is not treated in the initial stage and the rival companies will take advantage of the situation.
Moreover, the increase in the cost of product development and the marketing and advertising
costs have taken a toll on the financial management of the company (Grady 2016, p.1). It has
been marked as an underperforming brand and the reasons are many. The company has a
restricted patent protection ability, which is focused under the problem area of the company.
Recent downturn in the global economy and maintain a positive brand image in this environment
has come as a major challenge for Under Armour. This research proposal will further highlight
the problems faced by the company Under Armour to conduct a research on the same.
Rationale of the research
The research that will be carried out on the American Company, Under Armour will be
able to find out probable solution to the problems that were highlighted in the previous section of
the proposal. The recent downturn in the economy all over the world has taken a toll on the
business of Under Armour and this research will be helpful in finding out strategies that might
save the future of the company. The research will be able to look out for alternative strategies
used by the rival companies in the market in order to be at par with the industry standards. The
rationale of the research was based on finding out the problems to carry out a research on the
same and look for probable solutions of the problems. It will help the company to overcome the

3UNDER ARMOUR
issues to certain extent and emerge as a reputed brand in the market. The tough competition from
the rival companies of Nike, Adidas and Reebok will be evaluated to look for innovation in the
product and services of Under Armour (Grady 2017, p. 3). This proposal will be effective in
structuring the research questions so that the study can be carried out in a systematic manner to
draw a probable solution for the rising problems.
Management decision statement (MDS)
The management decision statement or the MDS referred to the opinion of the
management regarding the problems pertinent to the company. Past information and forecasts,
resources and constraints, objectives, customer behavior, legal environment, economic
environment and marketing and technological skills are considered important with respect to the
decision statement of management (Guyan and Paunil 2017, p.44). In the case of Under Armour,
the management decision statement has thrown light on the company reports and their rate of
success in the past years. It was found out from the opinion of the managers that the company
was following a positive graph from the initial days of its business. However, the problem started
arising when there was a economic downturn all over the world. Under Armour, fell prey to this
global issue and their business started falling low. Additionally the company also had lack of
proprietary product rights and intellectual property rights, which tended to be major problem in
their business. The information gathered from the managers bore proof to the fact that the
company was finding it difficult to cope up with the financial crisis as well as maintain a positive
brand image in the market. The data collected from the existing documents highlighted that the
rival company Nike had a market share of 13.13%, whereas Under Armour had 1.87% (Heroux
2017, pp. 124- 128). This huge difference in market share was considered as one of the problems
in the research area.

4UNDER ARMOUR
Business research objective (BRO)
This research is aimed at the fulfillment of different objectives of the research to solve
the problems faced by the company Under Armour. Every business has the objective to make
profit and gain most of the market share and Under Armour was no exception. However, the
business had started well under Kevin Plank but later fell to a major loss. Their lack of property
rights added more to the issue and it required an immediate solution to cope up with the loss. The
company needed to stand erect in the competitive market and therefore, a research will be
conducted to focus on the attainment of the specific objectives. Given below are the objectives,
which will be fulfilled at the end of the research.
 Objective 1: to find out the specific problems which made operation difficult for Under
Armour
 Objective 2: to look out for alternative solution to the persisting problems in the
company
 Objective 3: to find a probable conclusion for helping Under Armour to regain their
market share
Research question
The specific research questions are outlined below which will help in deriving a probable
solution to the problems in Under Armour.
1. What problems are specifically faced by Under Armour while marketing their products?
2. What steps are taken by the managers to reduce the specific problems?
3. What are the alternative strategies used by the rival companies of Under Armour?

5UNDER ARMOUR
Research hypothesis
The null and alternate hypothesis for the specific research is given below:
H0: The marketing research of the company is not helpful for solving their problems in gaining
market share
H1: The marketing research of the company is helpful for solving their problems in gaining
market share
Structure of the research
The research will be outlined by maintaining a proper format of five chapters. Chapter 1
will include introduction. In the introduction part, the research will focus on the background of
the company and the topic of the research. In the case of Under Armour, the problem will be
based on the underperformance of the brand. The issue of the brand also revolved on the
management of the cost of product development, and at the same time coping up with the
increasing cost of marketing the products. This became the problem statement for the research. It
will be followed by the rationale of the research. This section will focus on the importance of
carrying out the research and the effectiveness of doing the same. The following section will
highlight the aims and objectives of the research. It will outline the basic concept behind carrying
out the research and the factors that will be looked forward at the end. There will be three
research questions based on which the information will be collected. The aim of the researcher
will be to compare and contrast the collected information with the research question to find a
probable solution for the same. The research question will be followed by determining the
hypothesis for the research. The hypothesis will involve a null and an alternate hypothesis, which
will be symbolized as H0 and H1 respectively.

6UNDER ARMOUR
The second chapter will consist of the literature review. In this section, the researcher will
gather information from the existing literature, documents, company reports, books and journal
articles. In the case of Under Armour, the company reports will focus on the growth of the
company and the marketing strategies used by them. The literature review will look for the
alternative strategies used by other companies previously during their crisis period. It will
consider similar kinds of problems faced by Under Armour or other companies regarding their
product development or coping up with the costs of marketing.
The third chapter of the report will consist of the research methodology. In this chapter,
the methods adopted for conducting the research work will be outlined. There are different types
of research methodology such as primary and secondary. Primary sources refer to the collection
of first hand data and the secondary sources refer to the collection of existing information. In this
part it will be justified the use of certain kind of research methodology. This chapter will also
include research philosophy, research design, research strategy and research approach and
justification will be provided for using a specific category in the particular research.
The fourth chapter will involve the process of data collection and analysis. In this
chapter, the research will highlight if qualitative or quantitative data analysis was done in the
course of the specific research. The justification of using the particular process of data collection
and analysis will be explained in detail.
Finally, the fifth chapter will conclude the findings of the research by drawing a suitable
conclusion and providing recommendation for the betterment of the company. It will give a
complete structure to the report that was focused on the problems faced by the American

7UNDER ARMOUR
company Under Armour. Furthermore, the research will outline the limitations of the research
and ethical considerations that were maintained throughout the journey of the researcher.
Research design
For the specific research on Under Armour, the suitable research design will be
descriptive. There are three types of research design such as descriptive, explanatory and
exploratory, but descriptive will be best suited in the specific research. The other two research
designs cannot be considered relevant to the problems that were faced by Under Armour.
Exploratory research design helps in analyzing the initial stages of the study (Holt 2016, pp. 40-
50). This cannot be used in this research, as the initial stages did not focus on the specific
problem of the company. The problems emerged in the later part of the business when there was
economic downturn. On the other hand, explanatory research design is effective in those cases
where a relationship is established between two research variables. It was not applicable in this
research because the study did not focus on two variables, rather there were different issues
involved in the research. Therefore, descriptive research design was found suitable in the specific
study related to the problems faced by the American company Under Armour. The diagram
given below reflects the idea behind using descriptive research design for this specific study.

8UNDER ARMOUR
Fig: Descriptive research design
Source: (James and Whitney 2018, pp. 164- 193)
Sample design and justification
For this particular research on the underperformance of Under Armour, descriptive
research design will be suitable. This is because the specific research design will be effective in
presenting an in- depth analysis of the relevant theories and concepts of the research topic. In
order to understand the marketing issues and problems related to the increasing cost of product
development, a detailed analysis was necessary. That is the reason behind choosing descriptive
research design for this particular research. Descriptive research design will help in conducting a

9UNDER ARMOUR
detailed analysis of the marketing issues and financial problems faced by the company due to
economic downturn (Jensen et al. 2016, pp. 281- 298).
Among different research philosophy, positivism research philosophy will be used in this
specific research because it will help in observing the topic from a logical and critical
perspective. This research philosophy will be suitable in this topic because the interpretation will
be derived from the sensory experience. It will be an objective kind of research, which will be
based on facts. Other research philosophies will not be used because those are related to human
perception and it might result in the variability of the research outcome (Johnson Dretsch and
Kirmani 2014, p. 35).
The research on Under Armour will use deductive approach because it will be based on
the previous theories and concepts. There will not be any innovation or no new theories will be
established in this research. Other research approach will not be used in this case because
inductive approach is used when the research is intended to focus on the establishment of new
theories. However, in this research no new concept will be build up by the researcher.
Apart from choosing a specific research design, there will be a particular source for data
collection. It can be collected from primary and secondary sources. For this particular research,
major data collection will be done from the secondary sources. It will consider the information
collected from the existing company reports and data of other companies. To analyze the
collected data, thematic analysis will be done in order to arrange the information on different
themes. The validity of the collected data will be checked and measured.

10UNDER ARMOUR
Conclusion
It can be concluded from the proposal that the research will be able to find out a probable
solution for the problems persisting in Under Armour. This proposal has outlined different
methods and designs that will be considered for conducting this research and a justification for
using the same has been provided. The suitable method for collecting and analyzing data for the
research was effective in understanding the manner in which the research will be completed.
Moreover, the research will be carried out in an ethical manner and the limitations of the
research will be carefully dealt.

11UNDER ARMOUR
References
Baughman, K.C., 2018. Can A Celebrity Make A Retail Company? The Impact of Video
Endorsements on Nike and Under Armour’s Profits and Stock Performances (2010-2017).
Bohnsack, D., Jostol, G., Maher, R., Sundar, A., Pokrywczynski, J. and Berg, K., 2016, January.
TRACKING SPORTS & EVENT MARKETING ANALYTICS FOR MARKETING EFFECTS:
RELEVANT RESEARCH QUESTIONS THE INDUSTRY KNOWS AND NEEDS.
In American Academy of Advertising. Conference. Proceedings (Online) (p. 154). American
Academy of Advertising.
Grady, J., 2016. Predicting the Future for Rio 2016: Legal Issues in Sponsorship, Ambush
Marketing, and Social Media. ESLJ, 14, p.1.
Grady, J., 2017. Analyzing Rule 40’s Restrictions on Using Athletes in Olympic Sponsorship at
Rio 2016. The Entertainment and Sports Law Journal, 15(1).
Guyan, A. and Paunil, A., Under Armour Inc, 2017. Shoe component. U.S. Patent Application
29/557,044.
Heroux, L., 2017. Sports Outfitters’ Marketing Strategies: A Comparative Exploratory Study in
the US and Canada.
Holt, D., 2016. Branding in the age of social media. Harvard business review, 94(3), pp.40-50.
James, C.R. and Whitney, K., 2018. Under Armour: repositioning for the global stage. The CASE
Journal, 14(2), pp.164-193.

12UNDER ARMOUR
Jensen, J.A., Wakefield, L., Cobbs, J.B. and Turner, B.A., 2016. Forecasting sponsorship costs:
marketing intelligence in the athletic apparel industry. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 34(2),
pp.281-298.
Johnson Dretsch, H. and Kirmani, A., 2014. Why Are Some Brand Co-Creation Activities More
Effective Than Others?: the Effects of Brand Knowledge Potential and Self-Brand Connection
on Brand Engagement Intentions. ACR North American Advances.
Bibliography
Lee, C. and Kahle, L., 2016. The linguistics of social media: Communication of emotions and
values in sport. Sport Marketing Quarterly, 25(4), p.201.
Li, J., Wong, J.Y., Leung, P.W.Y., Yip, W.T. and Tian, X., 2015. CASE SYNOPSIS FOR.
McCullough, B.P. and Melton, E.N., 2017. The Benefits of Becoming a Green Company: A
Corporate Marketing Approach. Journal of Contemporary Athletics, 11(1).
Seamarks, K. and Woodman, P., Nike Inc, 2016. Shoe upper. U.S. Patent Application
29/528,472.
White, D., White, C. and White, D., 2017. Sponsorship-Linked Marketing: Using Social Media
Brand Affinity Data to Determine Sport Sponsorship Effectiveness (pp. 369-370).