Nike: Market Segmentation, Market Target and Market Positioning

Introduction

The company Nike was founded in 1964 by Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight who had located their headquarters near Beaverton, Oregon. This company is one of the major suppliers of the world’s sports shoes and one of the major manufacturers of sports equipment. For Nike, their target market includes athletes and mostly young adults. Nike improved their products over the years by making their products more comfortable and lighter which enables consumers to wear their products for a longer period without having to feel soreness on their feet. Nike offers their customers a huge variety of shoes type and colors, and they mainly focus on a lifestyle, running or training shoes. Besides shoes, they also sell different kinds of sports equipment, clothing, backpacks, guards, and soccer balls. Nike’s mission is to do their best to expand human potential, and they are trying to achieve a positive impact on their customers in the various communities. Nike also has its stores opened all around the world to serve a wider range of people.

Market Segmentation

Nike customer segments comprise four categories which are demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral market segmentation. For demography segmentation, Nike has included different age groups, gender and based on their targeted customer’s financial status. Nike has separated their products by different age group which is mainly between 15-55 years old and by gender. There are three types categories, men products, women products, and lastly the kid’s product, this allows the customers to be served better and have a better shopping experience. To fulfill the needs of everyone, Nike also promotes sales, cuts the prices change to reduce the cost, or gives a discount to the product. For example, Nike would have sales during the Great Singapore Sales to attract more people to buy as some customers may not be able to afford the price before discount.

For geographic segmentation, Nike has their stores worldwide, and they do understand that different country has different culture and lifestyle habits. Nike has launched different products in different countries to suit the regional customer’s needs. For example, during winter Nike produce sneakers and clothing that can keep out the cold unlike in Singapore which only has one season, summer.

Psychographic segmentation for Nike is that they provide their customers variety of products that suits their interest and meets their standards. Nike has their mission statement “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world” and based on their mission statement they are trying their best to meet the needs of their customers. This allows Nike to find out what their individual customer preferred, as not all the customers that buy Nike loves to do sports therefore psychographic segmentation gives Nike ideas, to produce different types of products for buyers based on their own preference. For example, young adults prefer Nike shoes is mainly because it’s a fashion lifestyle with high quality, and they would want to follow the trend.

Lastly behavioral segmentation, Nike provides benefits to the customers as they provide an active lifestyle with comfortable footwear, clothing, and useful sports equipment. Nike also does notice that to satisfy the majority of people they need to improve on their products. For example, Nike has come up with similar pairs of shoes which are Nike Air Force 1 High iD and Nike Air Force 1 Med iD to suit different types of customers as their own preferences are different from one another.

Market Target

Nike’s target audience is for people who regularly exercise and for those who will wear for fashion trend as it goes well with modern-day clothing. Nike has classified their target customers mainly into three product groups, men's products, women's products and kid’s products. For men's products, they have twelve different categories for shoes that consist of lifestyle, running, gym & training, football, American football, basketball, tennis, golf, crickets, baseball & softball, skateboarding, and athletics. For women products, unlike men’s products, Nike provide different options for women as Nike understands that women don’t really play American football therefore they replace it with yoga. For kids’ product, Nike mainly target on young athlete like how their mission statements states bring inspirations to every athlete. Besides these, Nike provides their customers with variety of colors for the shoes so that their targeted customers can find the pair of shoes that suits them the best. Moreover, people in the society are achieving healthy lifestyle, they start to exercise more and eat healthy, people tend to jog or do sports nowadays. Nike notices the change and produce items that satisfied the needs of their customer, for example, they produce more comfortable clothing and footwear that able to give customers an enjoyable exercise experience so that their customers would prefer the items sold in Nike.

Market Positioning

Market positioning is how Nike position themselves in the market with other competitors like Adidas or Puma and ensures customers would buy from Nike instead of other brands. Nike have their positioning statement which is “For serious athletes, Nike gives confidence that provides the perfect shoe for every sport”, the customers who wanted to achieve the best for their exercise experience or wanted to be success in their sports career will be influenced to buy products from Nike. The reason behind is because Nike’s produce their products based on the needs of their targeted customers as they research and improve their products not only for the majority but also for those customers with other special needs. In the society nowadays, there’s strong positioning in quality sports achievement and Nike being the Number one sports manufacturer in the world they have been leading more than hundred countries. Nike stands a strong belief in customer’s mind that it’s the best option for them when they need sports products. Due to the impression and high quality products, Nike had also position themselves to be high-class brand and the price of their products is more expensive than the other brand in the sports market.

Conclusion

Nike has built emotional connection with its customers by always inspiring people to be more awareness towards active lifestyle. As the modern technology has become more and more advanced, people tend to live in a sedentary lifestyle. Their leisure seems to be overly occupied by their busy worktime and have even less time to do exercise. Nike is inspiring those whom having a busy work life to become more active in their lifestyle which selling the heroism. Nike reminds those people nowadays to be cared on their health and fitness. As doing exercise can bring multiple benefits to our body host physically and helps to calm our mind mentally. Nike recommends its consumers to share their track history on social media or mobile app. As those existing customers are sharing their proudness and happiness to others while inspiring people around them to start doing exercise and to be aware on health.