Analyzing Market Segmentation & Marketing Strategy of Nike Air Jordan

This essay delves into the market segmentation and marketing strategies employed by Nike for its Air Jordan brand. It highlights the importance of segmentation criteria, including demographic, psychographic, and behavioral factors, in targeting the right customers. The analysis extends to the long tail strategy and its implications for niche markets, emphasizing the brand's focus on unique, high-value products appealing to consumers with specific needs and a higher social and financial status. The essay concludes that effective segmentation and a strong distribution channel are crucial for maintaining customer interest and driving sales for brands like Air Jordan.

Running head: BUISNESS MANAGEMENT
Business Management
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Table of Contents
Company and marketing strategy...............................................................................................2
Segmentation Criteria.................................................................................................................2
Additional Segmentation............................................................................................................3
The long Tail and its implications..............................................................................................3
References..................................................................................................................................5

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Company and marketing strategy
Segmentations are the integral part of modern day business management. The selected brand
for understanding segmentation process and why it is important in the context of marketing,
is Nike’s brand Air Jordan. Nike is known for their customer relationship and quality
products. This company targets the market that is full of potentiality for the sales of sports
shoes. The Air Jordan brand is known for high price quality products. Nike’s Air Jordan
produces casual, athletic, basketball shoes and clothing. The company has launched a number
of editions for Air Jordan. These shoes were primarily designed exclusively for Michael
Jordon. This brand of Nike shoes and clothing are solely for the people and players. The price
of the products are higher than the other competitors.
Segmentation Criteria
Segmenting the market according to the company objectives is necessary for any company.
The expensive brands have to give special importance to the segmentation that is why having
the right kind of segmentation helps the company to get right kind of customers. According to
Sarvari, Ustundag & Takci (2016), the segmentation criteria is for the need identification and
getting sales opportunity. A company cannot provide the needs of each one in the market.
Therefore, specializing in needs are necessary and here is the need for customers’
segmentation. If the brand like Air Jordon do not find its target customers, the stores business
will face losses and hence, the costs will be high but there will be no sales.
Segmentation criteria used by Nike for their brands are based on four main categories-
demographic, psychographic and behavioural. The demographic segmentation is necessary
because it helps to understand the age, occupation, gender and family needs. The
psychographic segmentations are social class, lifestyles and personality that is necessary to
understand the attitude of the customers. The last is the behavioural segmentation that

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comprises of the knowledge of products among the customers, occasions, loyalty and usage
rates, based on which the production will be done. The necessity of segmentation in the
brands like Nike Air Jordon can be understood by the fact that segmentation enables them to
invest at the right place and right type of customers. The company strategies are based on
differentiation. Hence, there is a need that the marketing and advertisement must be at the
right type of consumers.
Additional Segmentation
As the company has earned a good amount of reputation in the international market, it is
becoming more customer centric in recent times. Additional segmentation is important
because the company products are designed in a way that fulfills the expectations of
particular kind of customers. For example, the Air Jordan is designed for the segment of
consumers who have a high social and financial status. This is why the customers can pay
higher money for the value product. The brand name creates high expectations and hence, the
customers expect higher personal experiences in the store.
Along with the segmentation, that Nike already follow there can be some extra segments like
psychographic attitudes, opinions and frequency of purchasing (Ronisky, 2016). These
segments for the target customers will help the company to understand how much the
products are being sold and the changes that are needed in their design (Brohi et al., 2016).
This is done because this will also add clarity in production units and distribution of the
products.
The long Tail and its implications
In the long tail business strategies, the companies try to seller the low volume of their
products. Here products are unique and usually hard to find. Chris Anderson first used this
term in 2004 (Chen & Yi, 2019). This is the opposite strategy of selling large volume of the

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reduced number of popular items. This strategy is said to have appositive impact on the sales
profit. The long tail theory says that the products with low volume can exceed the rivals
market share in the distribution channel of the company is largest enough.
This type of marketing is effective for the niche markets. The present buying behavior of the
customers show that instead of mass buying, they are more interested in the products that are
limited and more artisan in nature. The products of Nike Air Jordan stays in demand for the
same reason. Another implication of long tail strategy is that it increases the market share of
the companies that have a strong distribution channel. Even in the reduced market volume,
the sales of the niche products can be put into rivalry. The stocks of the products are much
lesser than the mainstream retail stores. Thus, the products that are sold using the long tail
strategy can increase customers interest and company sales for the brands in the market.

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References
Brohi, H., Prithiani, J., Abbas, Z., Bhutto, A., & Chawla, S. (2016). Strategic Marketing Plan
of Nike.
Chen, D., & Yi, S. (2019, August). Research on the Generation and Development of Sharing
Manufacturing based on the Long Tail Theory. In International Conference on
Management Science and Engineering Management (pp. 149-161). Springer, Cham.
Ronisky, C., (2016), How to narrow down your market segment. Retrieved from:
https://newyorkcity.score.org/blog/how-narrow-down-your-market-segment
Sarvari, P. A., Ustundag, A., & Takci, H. (2016). Performance evaluation of different
customer segmentation approaches based on RFM and demographics analysis.
Kybernetes.