Nike: Evolution, Development, and Strategic Analysis Report

This report provides a detailed analysis of Nike's evolution, development, and strategic initiatives. It begins with a historical overview of the company, from its founding as Blue Ribbon Sports in 1964 to its current status as a global sportswear giant. The report explores Nike's product diversification through acquisitions and its expansion into various sports-related technologies. It examines the company's mission, which emphasizes innovation and inspiration for athletes. Furthermore, the report assesses the alignment of Nike's objectives and strategies with its resources, highlighting its marketing and advertising strategies. The financial performance of Nike is evaluated, including revenue recognition and stock performance. A SWOT analysis is conducted to identify the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, providing a comprehensive view of its market position and future prospects. The report references key sources to support its findings.

Running head: EVOLUTION, DEVELOPMENT AND STRATEGIES UNDERTAKEN BY NIKE
Evolution, Development and Strategies undertaken by Nike
Name of the Student:
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EVOLUTION, DEVELOPMENT AND STRATEGIES UNDERTAKEN BY NIKE
A. Company: Nike
1. A brief history of Company's evolution as well as the development
The name Blue Ribbon Sports initially knew Nike Inc. was founded in the year 1964. It is
an American based sportswear Company, and the main headquarter is in Beaverton in the
U.S. state of Oregon. It was founded by Bill Bowerman, who was a track-and-field coach
at the renowned University of Oregon (Enekwe, Agu & Nnagbogu, 2014). When it was
early 21st century, Nike has already succeeded in establishing retail outlets as well as
distributors in almost more than 170 countries across the world and also its universal logo
that is a curved check type mark is usually known by “swoosh” and it is recognized by
the logo all over (Nike News, 2019).
Nike had undergone through a lot of development in business from the late 1980s when
the Company actually expanded its market and also had diversified its line of products
through several acquisitions that include Shoe companies, for example, Cole Haan as well
as Converse Inc. and other athletic apparel companies like Umbro. In the year 1996,
Company also created Nike ACG, a department that started focusing on marketing shoes
for mountain biking as well as snowboarding. In 21st century decade, the Company began
selling various accessories related to sport- technology that include portable monitors for
measuring heartbeat rate as well as wrist compasses that can work on high altitudes (Nike
News, 2019). The success of this Company is mainly owed to several endorsements by
some of the famous athletes like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Roger Federer;
consumers started showing their broad spread interests towards a range of products after
those sports events.
2. Functions of an overall corporation that owns this brand Nike

EVOLUTION, DEVELOPMENT AND STRATEGIES UNDERTAKEN BY NIKE
Nike Inc. is owned by Multinational Corporation situated in U.S. that is mostly focused
on rendering innovative design as well as the development of sports apparel, and it is also
involved in manufacturing as well as worldwide marketing of footwear, various
equipment as well as accessories that necessary for taking part in games and sports.
The mission of the corporation
Its corporate mission statement usually talks about bringing inspiration as well as
innovation to the lives of individuals who possess the passion for becoming a world-
renowned athlete. According to the views of the founder of Nike Bill Bowerman, "If you
have a body, you are an athlete", and presently the Company is focused on strengthening
its brand name as well undertake further development of products (Nike News, 2019).
Matching of various objectives as well as strategies with the Company’s skills or
resources
Nike utilizes strategies associated with spreading of keen awareness towards the brand
among a large number of consumers to capture a a large part of market share. It generally
uses very high quality resources as well as efficient labour resources to meet its objectives
in the market (Oinas & Lagendijk, 2017). It started its advertising form of strategy for
increasing the demand for sports goods among athletes who work at a professional level.
3. Performance of the Company in the financial sector
Nike abides by specific economic policies like concerning estimation on management
grounds, in terms of recognition of revenues as well as while shipping as well handling of
costs in the market. It has a large part of share in the market of sportswear, and through
strategies like a valuation on inventories, it has been able to sell the products at excellent
prices. It has also been able to create about $12 billion of free income at combined level
standards through its operations in the year 2015 (Nike News, 2019).

EVOLUTION, DEVELOPMENT AND STRATEGIES UNDERTAKEN BY NIKE
Performance of Company’s stock in recent time
Nike Inc. is undergoing through a stock market of U.S. $87.07 billion in September 2019,
and it has been able to produce 7,743 goods this time (Nike News, 2019).
Figure: Graph showing Stock exchange price of Nike at recent times
(Source: Mahdi et al., 2015)
4. SWOT Analysis of Nike [Refer to Appendix for a table for SWOT analysis]
SWOT analysis of the Company identifies four different factors of the Company that are
Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats; they are explained as follow:
Strengths

EVOLUTION, DEVELOPMENT AND STRATEGIES UNDERTAKEN BY NIKE
 Nike has the name of world-famous producer of sports shoes, and therefore, it has
established a joint venture with that of some other renowned companies like Apple as
well as IPod (Brohi et al., 2016).
 It has a large spread of its distribution channels and holds a strong position over long
term debts at a minimum level.
 It has a wide range of products and also conducts various marketing campaigns for
endorsement of goods.
 Has large sections of sports apparel based on sports and games.
Weakness
 Sales of products mostly depend on various segments associated with footwear.
 Certain scandals concerning factories of Nike in China has some bad reputation in the
market since it used to pay minimum wages to workers at Chinese factories
 Price rates are comparatively higher than that of Adidas; therefore, people switch to
other companies, thus leading to loss of the Company.
Opportunity
 It has the chance to produce other types of sports apparel like bags, sunglasses as well
as jewellery that increase the interests of customers in the market.
 It usually supports multinational sports events like Olympics and FIFA, and through
advertisement and promotion, it has been able to reach too many customers (Brohi et
al., 2016).
 It has also growing segmentation markets for women athletes especially and
encourage them to face challenges in sports; this leads to the process of women
empowerment.
Threats

EVOLUTION, DEVELOPMENT AND STRATEGIES UNDERTAKEN BY NIKE
 Inevitable recessions in the economic background, as well as fluctuations in price, can
sometimes lead to loss of the Company.
 A large amount of competition from a large number of competitor companies like
Adidas as well as Reebok and this possess danger to Nike, and it is becoming difficult
for the Company to produce quality products.
 Products of Nike are mostly sensitive to levels of price.

EVOLUTION, DEVELOPMENT AND STRATEGIES UNDERTAKEN BY NIKE
Reference List
Brohi, H., Prithiani, J., Abbas, Z., Bhutto, A., & Chawla, S. (2016). Strategic Marketing Plan
of Nike.
Oinas, P., & Lagendijk, A. (2017). Towards understanding proximity, distance and diversity
in economic interaction and local development. In Proximity, Distance and Diversity
(pp. 307-331). Routledge.
Mahdi, H. A. A., Abbas, M., Mazar, T. I., & George, S. (2015). A Comparative Analysis of
Strategies and Business Models of Nike, Inc. and Adidas Group with particular
reference to Competitive Advantage in the context of a Dynamic and Competitive
Environment. International Journal of Business Management and Economic
Research, 6(3), 167-177.
Enekwe, C. I., Agu, C. I., & Nnagbogu, E. K. (2014). The effect of financial leverage on
financial performance: Evidence of quoted pharmaceutical companies in Nigeria.
Journal of Economics and Finance, 5(3), 17-25.
Nike News (2019). Read Nike's Mission Statement and find information about NIKE, Inc.
innovation, sustainability, community impact and more. [online] Nike News.
Available at: https://about.nike.com/ [Accessed 23 Sep. 2019].

EVOLUTION, DEVELOPMENT AND STRATEGIES UNDERTAKEN BY NIKE
Appendix
SWOT analysis