Promotional and Advertising Strategies - Case Study Example

Promotional and Advertising Strategies Introduction The study is focused on the analysis of the promotional and advertising strategies of various leading brands of global sports apparel business sector. Promotional strategy generally influences two-way communication within consumers and marketers to increase sales as well as to attract new customers. Alternatively, advertising strategy focuses on the one-way communication within organization and consumers to influence the product selection and purchasing decisions of the consumers. The study will compare and contrast the promotional strategies of two leading sports apparel marketing companies such as Nike and Adidas. The further discussion will illustrate different recommendations for the organizations in terms of utilizing marketing information to different themselves within the marketplace. The study will also discuss the use of consumer-oriented promotion methods for the sports apparel industry along with the pricing decisions used by leading organizations. Finally, it will also discuss the most effective advertising methods and mediums for the organizations of sports apparel sector. Compare and Contrast of the Promotional Strategies of Nike and Adidas The compare and contrast analysis of Nike and Adidas will emphasize on the similarities as well as different approaches of the organisations in terms of promotional procedure. Nike is an American retail brand which deals in manufacturing and marketing sports apparel and accessories. The organization has established their business in 1971 and they are headquartered in Oregon, USA. They possess near about 1600 retail stores across major cities of the world (Nike Inc. 2014). Adidas is a German multinational sportswear retail company which is headquartered in Bavaria, Germany. The organisation was founded and established in 1949 and it currently possesses almost 1746 concept stores (Cullers, 2013). Promotional strategies Nike Adidas Marketing-oriented promotional strategies Nike mostly utilizes pull promotional strategies for their marketing activities. The organization prefers to use informational appeal by the celebrity endorsement. Nike has hired a number of athletes, such as well known soccer players and famous basket ball players, to promote their brand to the potential consumers worldwide. The marketing promotional strategy of Nike also involves sponsoring a number of sports team worldwide. Nike has sponsored a total of nine teams. Strong brand promotion through powerful slogan and distinctive logo has been also a pull promotional strategy of the organization. “Just do it” can be considered as one of their convincing slogans while their “swooch” logo creates a powerful impact to pull the potential consumers. Adidas also utilizes the sports team sponsoring activity as one of their major promotional strategy. In comparison to Nike, Adidas sponsors a total of 12 sports teams across the world. Adidas also highly focuses on celebrity endorsement in terms of promoting their marketing activities. In comparison to Nike, Adidas prefer to promote their product marketing through athlete as well as movie celebrities. Apart from soccer and basketball athlete endorsement, Adidas also influenced the marketing promotion through golf as well as hokey athletes worldwide. Catchy slogans can also be considered as one of the major tool to promote their marketing activity. “Impossible is nothing” is one of the most popular slogan developed by Adidas. Pricing-oriented promotional strategies Nike utilizes premium pricing strategy to promote their product as the superior brand out of all the available competitors in the market. The pricing-oriented promotion of the organization mainly focuses on delivering value of the product to their consumers. Adidas utilizes the price skimming strategy as well as competitive pricing strategy in terms of their pricing-oriented promotional activity. The price skimming strategy allows them to push their new brand to the consumers with a high price structure. This process allows them to increase the popularity of their product to the consumers. Alternatively, competitive pricing allow them to promote their product with consumer centric prices. Customer-oriented promotional strategies The customer oriented promotional activities of Nike mainly follows push strategy. Nike provides the facility of customizing shoes as per the preferences of their consumers. Consumers can avail 2 different non-matching pairs of different sizes. The customer-oriented promotion of the organization has also focused on experiential marketing procedure. Apart from experiential marketing, Nike mainly focuses on print advertising to pull their consumers towards their easily accessible stores. The customer-oriented promotional strategies of Adidas utilize push as well as pull strategy. Adidas influences the personality promotion strategy to increase the visit of consumers to their stores. The campaign of “D Rose Jump Store” promoted Adidas sneakers promoted by Derrick Rose. The organisation also focuses on generating creative and encouraging television advertisements to promote their product to the potential consumers. (Source: Nike Inc. 2014; Adidas Group. 2012) Recommendation to Use Marketing Information to differentiate in the Marketplace Product Differentiation Diversification of the product line as well as introduction of new technologies and features in the product categories can be considered as one of the major way to utilize marketing information of organizational differentiation. The marketing information regarding the product line and new product innovation of different competitive brands can assist organizations of sports apparel to analyze and understand the current development in terms of product features and product technologies. Hence, the organizations can utilize this marketing information to differentiate their product specification and features in comparison to the competitor products (Piercy & Evans, 2014). As per example, the marketing information of running shoe features of Adidas has assisted Nike to differentiate their new running shoe category in terms of product features and specifications. The organization has introduced a new range of running shoe with pressure adjustment that has allowed them to differentiate their products from competitors (Sanusi, et al., 2014). Price Differentiation The sports apparel organizations can utilize the marketing information regarding the pricing policies and strategies of other organizations to design a competitive as well as lucrative pricing strategy of their own. The sports apparel organizations can analyze the marketing information for the featured discounts and offers produced by the competitor organizations to understand the consumer preferences. Hence, this process for utilizing the marketing information can enable the organizations to set up innovative pricing strategy to target and attract potential consumers (Piercy & Evans, 2014). For instance, analysis the information regarding price of other competitor products has allowed Adidas to design a competitive pricing strategy for the organization. Therefore, it has allowed them to differentiate themselves from the other premium priced organizations (Adidas Group. 2012). Uses of Consumer-Oriented Promotions for Short and Long-Term Competitive Advantages Event Marketing Event marketing is one of the major uses of consumer-oriented promotion that can assist sports apparel organizations to enhance their short-term as well as long-term market competitiveness. The event marketing allows organization to design and develop a theme activity or occasion to promote new products of the organization. This procedure allows organization to influence their short-term competitiveness and profit by enhancing their sales for new products. This process also influences the long-term competitiveness of the sports-apparel organizations by enhancing the consumer awareness regarding their product features and efficacy (O'guinn, et al., 2014). For example, the campaign of women half marathon by Nike can be considered as one of the successful customer-oriented promotion of the organization. This half marathon not only influenced the organization to attract a huge consumer based of Washington D. C. towards their newly launched sports shoe ranges, it has also increased the awareness of women regarding fitness curriculum and fitness products. Hence, it has provided long-term competitive advantage to the organization to push their fitness products to the female consumers (Gametiime. 2014). Coupons promotion Coupon promotion can be considered as another important consumer-oriented promotional feature that can allow the sports apparel organizations to gather short and long-term competitive achievements. The coupon promotion involves the offering of discounts and price reduction to the potential consumers. This promotional activity can be offered to the consumers through their face-to-face transaction as well as their online shopping activities. This feature can certainly boost the sales procedure of the organization in the short time span by motivating the consumers to avail the coupon promotion. The proper utilization of the coupon promotion can also enable the markets to enhance the consumer loyalty towards their products. Hence, it can influence the long-term gain of the organization (Kazmi & Batra, 2009). Strategic Manner of Pricing in terms of Pricing Objectives Profit Oriented Pricing Objective A huge number of leading organizations within the sports apparel industry utilizes the profit-oriented pricing objective. This objective allows organizations to set their pricing strategy as per the value and market reputation of their product. This pricing objective assists organization to set price in such a way that the total revenue provides higher profit to the organizations in terms of the overall costs. This pricing objecting enables organizations to maximize their profit that can be invested in the market evaluation and product innovation procedure (Rao, 2009). For instance, the profit-oriented pricing strategy allows organizations such as Nike and Reebok to set premium pricing strategy for their products. This also allows the organizations to emphasize on their product features and values. Therefore, it enables the organizations to maximize their overall profit in comparison to the costs of the company (Shank & Lyberger, 2014). Status-Quo Pricing Objective Apart from profit maximization a number of organizations also utilize the status-quo pricing objective to set their pricing strategy. This objective allows organizations to select different pricing strategies to maintain the market share as well as competitive position within the market. This objective influences the organizations to match prices of competitors rather than beating it. This objective provides stabilization in terms of company sales and demand (Rao, 2009). As per example, the skimming price policy of Adidas follows the status-quo objective. This process allow the organization enter the market with higher price but subsequently maintain a matching price as per the pricing policy of the competitors (Shank & Lyberger, 2014). Recommendation of Actions to Gain a Competitive Advantage Experiential Marketing Experiential marketing is one of the major actions that different competitive organizations within the sports apparel industry may consider to gain desired competitive advantage. This process is a media mix promotional action that encourages organisation to influence the physical fascination and sensual interactions of consumers towards the offered products of the organisation. This promotional activity will enable the marketers of competitive brands to connect their consumers with the products via their participation in various memorable and credible events. Hence, this activity will assist the organisation to generate a new physical, mental and emotional experience for the potential consumers that can encourages consumer preference and consumer brand loyalty towards the organisation (Smilansky, 2009). For example, the kinetic motion control game introduced by Puma has given exceptional experience to the consumers regarding the use of sports shoe. Hence, it has influenced the competitive advantage of the organisation within the highly rivalry market (Marketing Society, 2013). Digital Marketing The competitor organizations can utilize digital marketing and promotional activities to differentiate themselves from competitors. The usage of cookies within the digital marketing and promotional process can enable the organizations to properly understand the individual requirement and demands of the potential consumers. This action will also allow the organizations to customize their products as per the unique preferences of the consumers. It also encourages the marketers to promptly reply to the needs and requirement of the potential consumers. Hence, this action will enable the marketers to set a unique position in the market in comparison to their competitors (Shank & Lyberger, 2014). Most Effective Advertising Medium for Sports Apparel Companies Sponsorship can be considered as the most effective advertising medium for the sports apparel companies. Sponsorship is one of the strongest medium of advertising that allow organizations to promote and advertise their products and services through various events and programs. Sponsorship activities assist organizations to advertise their products through different events which influence the usage of their products. Sponsorship demonstrates more involved advertising relationship between the organizations and their consumers. The sponsorship advertisement can be conducted through program sponsorship as well as event sponsorship (Huber, et al., 2015). The 2014 FIFA sponsorship by Adidas can be considered as one of the major examples for the effective advertising of the products of Adidas. This sponsorship has influenced the organization to improve their product visibility. It has also enabled the marketers to effectively engage the sports lovers to their highly featured product ranges. Puma, on the other hand, actively sponsor the sports apparels for the Jamaican sprinter, Usain Bolt. This sponsorship of Puma has assisted the marketers to influence their global marketing program through the participation of Usain Bolt in various sports events across the world (Shank & Lyberger, 2014). Conclusion The overall discussion of this study has evaluated various promotional strategies of the global sports apparel industry. The discussion has displayed the similarities and contrasts of the promotional and advertisement programs of Nike and Adidas. The discussion has evaluated different recommendation, such as product and price differentiation, for utilizing marketing information in terms of organizational differentiation. It has also illustrated event marketing and coupon promotion in terms of effectiveness of customer-oriented promotions. The profit-oriented and status-quo pricing objectives have been discussed as the major objectives for the pricing decision of this industry. The further discussion has evaluated experiential marketing and digital marketing as the tools to gain competitive advantage for the competitors in sport apparel market. Finally, it has discussed sponsorship as one of the effective advertisement medium for this industry. References Adidas Group. (2012). Pushing Boundaries. Retrieved from http://www.adidas-group.com/media/filer_public/2013/07/31/gb_2012_en.pdf. Cullers, R. (2013). Adidas Lets Fans Jump for Derrick Rose Sneakers in London Pop-Up Store. Retrieved from http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/adidas-lets-fans-jump-derrick-rose-sneakers-london-pop-store-151483. Gametiime. (2014). Nike Women's Half Marathon DC. Retrieved from https://gametiime.com/events/nike-women-s-half-marathon-dc-washington-2014. Huber, F., Vollhardt, K. & Matthes, I. (2015). The Effects of Sports Sponsorship on Attitudes and Purchase Intention: An Empirical Investigation of Direct and Moderating Effects. 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