Marketing Fundamentals Report: Analyzing Nike's Marketing Approaches

This report provides a comprehensive overview of marketing fundamentals, utilizing Nike as a case study. It begins by outlining the processes and stages of marketing, including situational analysis, strategy development, marketing mix decisions, and implementation. The report then delves into the role of the marketing mix (product, price, place, and promotion) and its impact on Nike's operations. It also examines how marketing creates value for customers by managing brand image, setting prices, promoting products, managing customer expectations, and understanding consumer behavior. Furthermore, the report explores stakeholder engagement and its influence on marketing activities, highlighting how stakeholder involvement builds relationships, aids in promotion, pools talent, minimizes risk, and informs decision-making. A reflection on the learning experience is also included.

Marketing Fundamentals

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1A.........................................................................................................................................1
1. Processes and stages of marketing including the role of the marketing mix......................1
The role of marketing in creating value for customers...........................................................4
Stakeholder engagement and their impact on marketing activities of an organisation..........5
TASK 1B.........................................................................................................................................6
Reflection...............................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Marketing is the technique every organisations using for promoting their products and
services. It help the organisation to increase their sales and profits, some of the activities
included in marketing are advertisement, selling and delivery of products to the customers of
other business. Its main purpose is to target audience by involving celebrities, catchy tag-lines
and attractive packaging (Behera and et. al. Davis, 2017). Organisations also use it for
maintaining a good relationship with their employees, networking with past employees is also
the part of the marketing which include thank you mails, returning calls and emails quickly and
having a professional coffee meet with the clients. Further in this report, concept of marketing
and marketing mix in context of Nike will be discussed more efficiently with the detailed study
of process and stages of marketing, roles of marketing and how is the stakeholders are engaged
in the organisational activities.
TASK 1A
1. Processes and stages of marketing including the role of the marketing mix.
PROCESS OF MARKETING:
There are some defined process of marketing which every organisation has to follow for
the efficiently performing the operations of the company. Process which Nike follow are-:
 Situational analysis- This is the very first process of marketing in which company is
require to analyse the situation in which it is working or serving. Company analyse the
situation for many purpose like to determine the opportunities for satisfying the needs of
customers. Organisation opt for the environmental and situational analysis to find out
their capabilities, their marketing options and to understand the surrounding in which
they are operating. It is important because it tells Nike about the potential to exist in the
market and their competitiveness in the market (Loebler, 2017). PEST Analysis and
SWOT Analysis is also the part of situational analysis which help Nike to analyse
market at macro level and micro level.
 Marketing strategy- This is the next process of marketing after analysing situation.
Once the situations has been analysed and opportunities and strength of the company is
determined, next step is to create or form some strong strategies. At this stage marketing
managers are require to make a strategic plan for availing those opportunities which they
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garbed in earlier stage. In other words, it is made to satisfy the needs of the customers as
well as for smooth functioning of the organisational activities. For making these
strategies, Nike need to invest in research and development to analyse the environment
and market to get the idea for framing some plans or policies (Connolly, 2015).
Segmentation, targeting and positioning of the products are the part of marketing strategy
which provide a guidance to Nike to perform their operations.
 Marketing mix decisions- This is the step in which calculated decisions are made
regarding the marketing mix. The decisions which are included in marketing mix are
product development in which marketing manager has to make some plan or strategy to
develop their product by giving it new designs or specifying it. This is important step
followed by Nike because it attract many new customers toward the company and create
trust between them. Other than this marketing mix also including pricing decisions in
which Nike has to plan the prices of the products by completely analysing the demand of
customers. Next is distribution contract in which organisation focuses On their
distribution channels. This does not ends here, marketing mix decisions is also related to
the promotional champaign of the company. Implementation and control- This is the last step of marketing process in which a final
plan has to be developed and those plans have to be converted in to the action according
to the planed strategy. In this final process, controlling also play an important role for
evaluating the performance of the organisation and to analyse the area for improvement.
STAGES OF MARKETING:
There are some marketing process stages which Nike has to follow before implementing
their activities-:
 Awareness- This is the stage in which company to make their customers aware about
their existence. In this Nike introduce their items in which it is dealing to create
impression among the consumers.
 Education- This is the stage according to which Nike has to provide a complete
information related to their products to the customers (Mitchell, Madill and Chreim,
2016) Nike also inform the consumers about their approaches and solutions.
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 Sample- Marketing consist this stage in which organisation has to distribute free samples
of their products if possible (Elshiewy, Guhl and Boztug, 2017). This is done by Nike for
attracting the customers and influencing them to buy from them.
 Purchase- This is the stage in which organisation influence customers to that level that
they agree to purchase the products of the company. Referral- This is last stage in which customers refer the service of company to their
families and friends which help the organisation to increase their customer base. By
referral Nike is able to make a proper customer base and can increase its expansion and
profit.
ROLES OF MARKETING MIX:
Marketing mix include four elements that are product, price, place and promotion. These
affect the operation of Nike in one or more way and also play a very important role.
 Product- This is the very important element of the marketing mix and it play very
important role in Nike because company's brand image is completely dependent on the
success of the product. Nike deal with number of products like Shoes, apparel, equipment
and accessories.
 Place- Place also plays an important role in the organisation as it provides success to the
company. Location is very important for the customers, they buy products from places
where they can easily reach. Nike sells its sports shoes, apparel and equipment through
large number of outlets. It has its own retail stores and online stores.
 Price- Role of price in the organisation is to attract the customers, it is the very crucial
decision for Nike through which it can target many audiences which will increase their
sales as well as profits. Price strategy followed by Nike is Value based strategy and
premium pricing strategy.
 Promotion- Role of promotion is to advertise the product of Nike and make the people or
customers aware about its existence. In order to target large audience Nike make use of
advertisement, personal selling, direct marketing and sales promotion to target large
audience.
The role of marketing in creating value for customers
Marketing refers to exchange of goods and services by satisfying the needs of consumer.
Marketing plays a crucial role in upgrading the business of Nike. It generates the value by
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creating the connection between the customers and companies (Ottman, 2017). There are various
role played by marketing which help in creating creating value of customers, from which some
of them are discussed below:
 Managing brand : Brand helps the Nike to define what is it about and also promotes the
image of company. A brand will attract more customers by its effective image which in
turns create high sales and also lead to the expansion of the company (Gunelius, 2017). If
Nike got successful in expanding its operation, it definitely will help in the profitability.
 Setting price : Price refers to the value of product. It is the biggest challenge for the
marketing department of Nike to set correct price for its product which should no be too
high nor be too low. It should be set in such a way so that it can be easily affordable by
each group of society.
 Promotional challenge: Advertising of products and service plays a great role in
attracting the customers and retaining the old one. As the scenario is changing, Nike can
also make a use of social media through which it can promote its product and remain in
touch with efficient customers as this will help them to know about the product
specification.
 Managing customer expectation: Customer satisfaction plays a great role in any
organisation. Without customer satisfaction company cannot succeed. Marketing helps to
provide useful information about product and services and manage customer expectation.
Customer always have a trust for valued brand. Nike often use marketing to create
awareness among the customers and also help them to know about the major changes if
occurred.
 Modelling consumer behaviour: Marketing is done to understand the behaviour of
consumer and producing advertisement is such a manner so that customer get influence.
By analysing marketing data and consumer behaviour, Nike would be able to able to
conclude about why people have taken such decision in regards with product as every
consumer have different taste.
 Create value: Marketing helps Nike to position the product in the minds of consumers.
This helps to create the value of goods and services. This is important because selling can
only be done if the company have determined about the needs and wants of customers
and are able to serve right service to right customer.
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Stakeholder engagement and their impact on marketing activities of an organisation
Stakeholder engagement refers to the process of involving people in an organisation who
may affect the decision or get influenced by the decisions. Depending upon the organisation,
shareholders differ (Paul and et. al., 2018). They include customers, suppliers, shareholders etc.
Engaging the stakeholders plays a crucial role in the success of Nike. Effective engagement
helps the Nike to make proper strategies and also building a adhesive vision for the future. If
there is proper evolvement of stakeholder in each work there will acceptance for the same and
work can be done more smoothly. By engaging stakeholders, they provide proper information as
well as feedback of the work which helps to create awareness of the program as they have basic
knowledge about the same (Illiashenko and Strielkowski, 2016). Hence, stakeholder engagement
is very important for Nike which also influence marketing activities in following manner:
 Build relationship: Stakeholders engagement help to build new relationship which
creates the confidence and and also minimise the uncertainties so that problems can be
solved and quick decision can be taken. For example, regular interacting with consumers
will help the Nike to know what are their actual requirement and what they want
company to improve in other words it helps to know the needs and expectation of
customers.
 Promotion: As every marketing activity requires promotion in one or other form, by
stakeholders it become very easy to promote the same as they know each and everything
about the concern and by making the use of social media, online advertisement, news
paper publication they can easily promote the product of Nike.
 Pool of talent: Stakeholders bring the people of same knowledge, experience together to
create the proper solution. It also help Nike to make proper strategies for marketing so get
competitive advantage over other companies and can explore themselves (Sarkane and
Sloka, 2015).
 Minimise the risk : Stakeholders helps to reduce the level of risk within the organisation
as they knew complete scenario about the Nike. This can help them to make proper action
plan or strategy to minimise the risk before it occurs.
 Decision making: By understanding the view and interest of stakeholders Nike is able to
make effective decision as by regular interaction they understand issues and concern
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regarding to marketing and this provides an opportunity to reflect what will work or what
will not.
TASK 1B
Reflection
The topic here I used in my report is Marketing Fundamentals. Marketing is a technique
which every organisation has to follows to promote its product and services. From this project I
got to know the importance of marketing in enhancing the growth of Nike as it is the company
which was taken for the study. For understanding the topic thoroughly the information has been
collected through different sources. For study of this topic, firstly I preferred to get information
through blogs as it make use of special software to create series of articles which gives a proper
knowledge about the topic concerned. I also have made use of market survey as by taking
knowledge from group of people it become very easy to measure the customer awareness and
also got to know about the product feedback. Information is also gained by the medium of
telephonic survey as by this mode personal view of consumer can be known and quality of
information which is gained through this mode is reliable. I got to know about the requirement of
certain group of people. After collecting all such information from different modes I got a
interest in this topic but the information was not enough to draw a meaningful conclusion so
therefore to know much dipper knowledge about the topic I have attend the seminars too.
In seminar, I have met people of high profession that share the experience on the actual
belief which helped me a lot in gaining a knowledge. I have also gone through many articles
published in newspapers, magazines and websites relating to the marketing and its principles
where I have read about the view points of different authors and their saying. Although while
doing research of this topic, I have faced many issues and hurdles as different people have
different views and it is very confusing to interpret a meaning conclusion. From the overall data
gathered its been found that marketing is very important whether related to size or type of
organisation. It helps an organisation to expand its territories overseas and also help to build a
brand image which will directly help in profitability of firm but alone it cannot work, customer
satisfaction also plays a great role. Together by satisfying the needs of consumer one can use this
technique efficiently. The study of this topic has helped me a lot to know about marketing, what
are its function and roles, why is it important for every organisation, what are the tools used for
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marketing and so on. Being marketing is very vast topic to discuss it helped me to increase my
knowledge and develop my communication skills as well as market research. Interaction with
lots of people of different communities was not that easy task and by this study it helps to
increase my overall skills.
CONCLUSION
From the above topic it has been concluded that marketing plays a important role in
boosting the business and operation of Nike. Marketing strategy is used by every organisation
regardless of its size and type. Organisation must conduct a marketing mix so that proper
strategy can be developed. Involvement of stakeholder is very essential to know about the impact
of marketing activities on the organisation as it build coherent vision for the future . Marketing
also plays a great role in valuing the customers which is very important as without satisfying the
needs of customer company can not succeed.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Behera and et. al., 2015. Information communication technology promoting retail marketing in
agriculture sector in India as a study. Procedia Computer Science. 48. pp.652-659.
Connolly, R., 2015. Fundamentals of web development. Pearson Education.
Davis, M., 2017. The fundamentals of branding. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Elshiewy, O., Guhl, D. and Boztug, Y., 2017. Multinomial logit models in marketing-from
fundamentals to state-of-the-art. Marketing ZFP. 39(3). pp.32-49.
Gunelius, S., 2017. 10 laws of social media marketing.
Illiashenko, S. M. and Strielkowski, W., 2016. Managing economic growth: marketing,
management and innovations.
Loebler, H., 2017. Humans’ relationship to nature–framing sustainable marketing. Journal of
Services Marketing. 31(1). pp.73-82.
Mitchell, A., Madill, J. and Chreim, S., 2016. Social enterprise dualities: implications for social
marketing. Journal of Social Marketing. 6(2). pp.169-192.
Ottman, J., 2017. The new rules of green marketing: Strategies, tools, and inspiration for
sustainable branding. Routledge.
Paul and et. al., 2018. Business Information Sciences emphasizing Digital Marketing as an
emerging field of Business & IT: A Study of Indian Private Universities. IRA
International Journal of Management & Social Sciences,(ISSN 2455-2267). 10(2).
pp.63-73.
Sarkane, G. and Sloka, B., 2015. Factors influencing the choice of higher education
establishment for marketing strategies of higher education. Economics and Business.
27(1). pp.76-80.
Zhao, Z. and Balagué, C., 2015. Designing branded mobile apps: Fundamentals and
recommendations. Business Horizons. 58(3). pp.305-315.
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