Marketing Strategy Report
Executive summary
This report will analyse the Adidas Company. This report provides an analysis and evaluation of effective marketing planning process, techniques for controlling marketing activities, contemporary marketing techniques, and their use in global and international markets. Furthermore, the report examines the skills of marketing managers and their role in the effective management of the marketing team, value of a brand from a number of different stakeholder perspectives, and the organisation’s marketing campaigns in different international markets.
Methods of analysis will include SWOT analysis, marketing controls, and international marketing trends. Results of analysis depict that Adidas has abundant opportunities and strengths, but suffers from a number of weaknesses and threats. The report finds that Adidas has taken advantage of its strengths and opportunities to develop effective marketing plans that have assisted them to achieve their marketing objectives.
The Adidas Company has adopted marketing controls, such as annual control, profitability control, and strategic control that have helped in spotting deviations in its marketing activities and provided timely remedies to the variations. Adidas has implemented contemporary marketing techniques, such as email marketing, PR marketing, mobile marketing and the use of social media that have assisted in growing awareness of its new products in different international markets.
Marketing manager skills, such as excellent communication skills, problem solving skills, and project management skills are noted to be vital in offering effective management to marketing teams. Stakeholders, such as employees, suppliers, and customers play a significant role in influencing the value of the Adidas brand. The various stakeholders participate in building the brand equity.
The Adidas has tailored its marketing campaigns to suit the different international markets. The company uses local athletes from various countries and influencers of markets to promote its new products, X 15 and ace 15 in different international markets. The report recommends that Adidas should design products that are affordable to several customers and implement marketing techniques that promote and differentiate its products from its competitors.
Introduction
The purpose of this report is to analyse the effective marketing planning processes and evaluate techniques for controlling marketing activities of the Adidas Company. This report also studies the contemporary marketing techniques and their use in global markets, examines skills of a marketing managers, and evaluates their role in providing management to the marketing team. Furthermore, this report assesses the impact and value of the Adidas Company brands from diverse stakeholders perspectives. In addition, this report looks into the marketing campaigns the Adidas Company has employed in different international markets.
The competitive global market calls for companies to plan their marketing activities, establish their strategies and accomplish their objectives more effectively. The contemporary marketing techniques aim to create a link between the customer and the organisation. Companies attract customers through social media content significant to their needs or writing newsletters that have valuable information.
Businesses that employ contemporary marketing techniques are seen to be successful in achieving their objectives than those companies that rely on conventional marketing techniques. The report will utilise references from the company website and other research articles. Besides examining the Adidas Company marketing strategy, this report will look at modern strategies that the company can utilise to expand its international markets.
Effective marketing planning process
Companies in all industries require marketing plans to succeed. Effective marketing planning process offers companies guidelines on how to market and trade their new products in the market within a specific period. The marketing plans guides the company in choosing an appropriate target market and then fulfill the customer needs in that segment. Moreover, the marketing planning process establishes the promotional strategies that can boost the sales volume of the company products.
The Adidas Company is an international corporation that designs and fabricates sports shoes, outfits, and accessories. The company is a leading sportswear in Europe and the global market. The Adidas Company has adopted a three divisional structure for its Adidas brand. The divisions include sport performance, sport heritage, and sport style. The adidas sport performance division centers on novelty, functionality, and design.
Furthermore, the division designs products for sports performance market, but have design appeal that pushes the consumers to wear the products off the playing field. The adidas sport heritage division includes adidas original products that aim to expand the exclusive and valid heritage of adidas to the lifestyle market. The sport style division is a fashionable assortment that consists of men’s and women’s shoes, clothing, and accessories.
The division targets young consumers who are looking for fashion-oriented sportswear products. The three divisional structures assist the Adidas Company to design and market innovative products, which satisfies the needs of varied customers. The Adidas has introduced new products like X 15 and Ace 15. X 15 is designed for players who control and bringing order to a chaotic game, while Ace 15 is designed for players who cannot be controlled.
Therefore, the Adidas Company requires an effective marketing planning process that would establish a target market for its new products and formulate plans of marketing its products and fulfilling the needs of that market. The marketing planning process is achieved through five fundamental steps. The five steps include objective and goal setting, assessing organisational resources, evaluating risks and opportunities, developing marketing strategy, and implementing and monitoring marketing plans (Adidas 2016).
Objective and goal setting
This initial stage of marketing planning process includes setting of goals and objectives the company wants to achieve. The company should link the marketing plan with its mission statement and determine the primary target audience. Moreover, the company should establish the profit margin it wants to achieve after implementation of the marketing plans (Social care institutes for excellence 2013).
The Adidas Company has developed a global brand in sporting products industry by designing quality new products that seeks to fulfill the expectations of customers. The Adidas Company has developed objectives that will assist the company to expand the global market of its new products. The company objectives include market penetration, which would aid in attaining market share in the global markets that the company competes.
The market development objective will enable the company to capture new business markets and respond to the needs of customer segments. In addition, the product awareness objective would offer visibility and realization of the company new products. The company objectives conform to its mission statement that states that the Adidas Company endeavor to be the global leader in sporting products industry with brands built on passion for sports and a sporting lifestyle (Chartered Management Institute 2015).
Assessing organisational resources
Marketing plans are influenced by internal factors, such as organisational resources. The organisational resources include capacity in manufacturing, advertising, finance, and technology. Assessment of these resources will enable organisations to locate their strengths and limitations. Strengths aid organisations to develop objectives, establish plans for accomplishing objectives, and gain from marketing opportunities. On the other hand, resource limitation might hold back an organization from benefitting on marketing opportunities (MLF4 2012).
The Adidas Company has several strengths that assist it to achieve its objectives. The company has strong financial position that is attributed to its several stores around the globe that make the company to achieve a profit of billions of dollars annually. The company trades its products from company owned stores, online stores, and supermarket stores. The effective distribution system enables the company new products to be available through diverse channels. The Adidas Company has increased consciousness of its new products through supporting major sports organisations, such as UEFA, NBA, world cup, and Olympics. The Adidas Company has uitilised YouTube to create videos that promote consciousness of its new products. Moreover, Adidas created videos that used David Beckham to promote its new products X 15 and Ace 15 (Nadeau et al. 2015).
However, the company has some limitations that prevent it from taking advantage of marketing opportunities. The company faces a risk of over dependency on outsourcing. The Adidas Company has subcontracted a bigger percentage of its production to third party manufacturers, such as Asia to benefit from easy accessibility of raw materials and fair labour cost. The premium prices of X 15 and Ace 15 sporting shoes due to inventive technology and manufacturing techniques have made the products exorbitant to deprived customers, particularly in developing countries (Adidas 2015).
Evaluating risks and opportunities
Nevertheless, the company has myriad of opportunities that will aid in fulfilling its marketing plans. The shifting lifestyle, taste, and preferences of rising economies have increased demand of premium brands. Furthermore, the company can extend its product line that will unlock new opportunities and attain an edge over its rivals through differentiation. In addition, the Adidas Company can integrate backwards that will aid in protecting their patent rights and combine their research and development division with the operational division in order to enhance brands innovation and development (Teach a man to fish 2014).
Nonetheless, the Adidas Company faces threats that might influence its marketing plans. Despite Adidas being a global brand, it still faces strong competition from other premium brands, such as Nike. Moreover, local companies and substitutes provide standard competition to Adidas brands. The over dependency on outsourcing its production has made supplier to have more bargaining power than the company (Institute of Risk management 2013).
Developing marketing strategy
Marketing strategy assist organisations to win market shares and converse to target market the advantages and aspects of a new product. Furthermore, the marketing strategy communicate the general value to their customers (Planning effective marketing strategies 2013).
The Adidas Company utilizes online marketing and other promotion campaigns to communicate their legacy of innovation and technology to customers. The company uses celebrities in its online marketing. Adidas use players like Mesut Ozil to promote its Ace 15 sporting shoes. Adidas argues that Ace 15 is built to control and suited to players like Mesut who bring order to a chaotic game. On the other hand, Adidas use players like Gareth Bale to promote its X 15 sporting shoes. The X 15 is built to give thorough traction to energetic and agile players in the world. The Adidas has adopted sports marketing through sponsoring sporting events that offer many opportunities to the company, such as new products promotion and brand consciousness. In addition, the Adidas utilises search engine optimization (SEO) tools to optimize its website by considering the key words used by people in search engines. The strategy has generated high consumer traffic for Adidas. Furthermore, Adidas place banner advertisements on other webpage that has promoted awareness of its new products (Khankaew et al. 2015).
Implementing and monitoring marketing plans
After developing the marketing plans, organisation follow the steps outlined in the plan towards achieving the stated objectives. The organisation provides continuous assessment to evaluate whether adopted strategies are achieving the objectives and goals. The Adidas Company stresses flexibility when implementing their marketing plans. The environmental opportunities and threats might not match with the company expectations. Shift in consumer demand, extension of distribution channels, and changes of supply costs might influence the outcomes, thus should be included into the monitoring of the plan (MLF4 2012).
Needs and techniques for controlling marketing activities
For Adidas Company to effectively control its marketing activities should adopt control systems that provide standards for assessing performance in each division of marketing. The outcomes of marketing departments, such as interactive advertising and marketing research department cannot be evaluated by similar standard because they are not similar. Hence, Adidas should implement control system that has matching standard for each department.
Furthermore, effective control system should be able to discover variation and report them to the management. The control system should also recommend possible remedies that can correct the deviations. In addition, the control system should be easily understandable by employees and cost-effective to the organisation. A control system that is customized to Adidas specifications provides comprehensive information that is significant to the company line of business (Adidas 2015).
Annual plan control
Annual plan control assists Adidas to evaluate its current marketing activities and outcomes to ensure that the yearly sales and profit objectives are attained. The annual plan control detects any variations on the performance of its X 15 and Ace 15 products and suggests possible corrective actions. The annual plan control utilizes tools, such as sales analysis, market share analysis, market expense analysis, and financial analysis to evaluate marketing activities and detect any deviations (Adidas 2015).
Profitability control
Profitability control helps Adidas Company to establish the definite profitability of its X 15 and Ace 15 products, market segments, and distribution channels. The information generated from profitability control will influence the company decision on extension, reduction, or deferment of its marketing activities.
The profitability control will identify the functional expenditure, allocate the functional expenditure to the marketing entities, and prepare income statement for every marketing entity. Therefore, the profitability rely on the of sales and marketing cost analysis in determining the profitability and expenditure of the marketing entities (Adidas 2015).
Efficiency control
The efficiency control aids the Adidas Company to enhance the effectiveness of its marketing activities, such as video marketing, network marketing, and blogging. The efficiency control assesses and reduces the marketing expenses of the marketing activities. Efficiency and profitability control are closely connected. Higher profits signify efficient management of the marketing activities (Adidas 2015).
Strategic control
The strategic control ensures that Adidas marketing objectives and strategies are suited to the present and predicted marketing environment. Furthermore, the strategic control will evaluate if the company is pursuing the opportunities presented by the distribution channels, products, and markets. T
he company management should continuously utilize the strategic control because the continuously shift in marketing environment might render the company objectives, strategies, and policies obsolete. Moreover, the strategic control examine the company marketing efficiency by employing tools, such as marketing audit and marketing effectiveness ranking appraisal (Adidas 2015).
Contemporary marketing techniques and their use in Global and International markets
Companies seek to expand their market share by venturing into global markets that are unsaturated and that offer the companies with several growth opportunities. Companies use contemporary marketing techniques to promote their new products in international markets. Most companies recognize they have limited markets when they concentrate in their local markets.
Hence, companies respond by looking international opportunities to raise their market share and customer base. The emergence of technology that crosses both cultural and national boarders presents the companies with the opportunity of utilizing technology to promote their products in global markets.
Moreover, the technology has resulted to development of contemporary marketing techniques, such as email marketing, social media, blogs, and public relation marketing that aid companies to market in global and international markets. Adidas Company has responded to customer migration to online world by embracing email marketing to promote its new products. Adidas utilizes email marketing to connect with current and prospective customers (Direct Marketing Association 2014).
Public relation marketing increases the awareness of the new products offered by Adidas and advances the company reputation in the media. The public relation marketing also publicizes new products introduced to the market by the company. The PR is responsible of writing press releases, newsletters, and speaking about the organisation in public meetings, which help in promoting the image of the company (Introduction to Public Relation 2012).
Social media sites, such as face book, and twitter offer Adidas exclusive opportunity to interact with customers and promote its new products. Adidas has utilized social media networks to increase consciousness of its new products, X 15 and Ace 15.In addition, studies suggest that companies who participate in social media platforms and mobile marketing enjoy higher loyalty from their customers.
Moreover, Adidas has embraced mobile marketing by acquiring an Australian fitness app maker, Runtastic. The app maker have over 130 million downloads and 75 million registered members globally, and is offered in 17 languages, thus giving Adidas a platform to market and promote its new products (Mobile Marketing Association 2014).
Adidas has shifted its bulk of its marketing budget into online marketing through focusing on instantaneous content and online video. The company has developed Adidas’ digital newsroom that aid in promotion of its new products. The brand newsroom aid the company to create quality contents that is unique and form emotions. Furthermore, the digital newsrooms create content that is tailored to its audience and it is delivered promptly and to the accurate standards (Adidas 2015).
Marketing manager skills and their role in the effective management of the marketing team
Technology advancement has altered the role of marketing to a point that the duties of present marketing managers vary significantly from those of some years ago. Nowadays marketing managers should understand how trends, technology, and social media work in the marketing mix. However, there are essential skills that marketing manager must possess to enhance their management and performance of marketing roles.
The Adidas Company success greatly depends on the effective management of its marketing managers to devise strategies that enhance new products promotion and increase sales. The marketing manager should possess excellent communication skills and create open and operating channels of communication. Strategic thinking is a vital skill that assists marketing managers to reflect and solve challenges with exceptional perspectives.
Furthermore, the marketing manager is able to make decisions based on long-term viewpoint and recognize how to handle the exclusive needs of each member participating in the project. The marketing managers are faced with the need to handle challenges from clients, team members, and the management. Excellent problem solving skills enable the marketing manager to handle swiftly the challenges from the three stakeholders.
In addition, the marketing managers are required to hone their project management skills to guide their teams in realizing their objectives and taking advantage of social media opportunities (National careers Service 2012).
Marketing managers play a vital role in providing effective management to their marketing teams. The marketing managers develop departmental targets and individualize them for each departmental staff. Moreover, they demonstrate how the individual targets would assist the department and the organisation as whole.
The marketing managers also identify the distinctive behavior of the team members and encourage them to achieve their targets by utilizing their unique traits. In addition, the marketing managers conduct performance appraisal of their marketing teams and congratulate them in departmental meetings when their transitional targets are achieved. This strengthens the significance on their individual capacities (National careers Service 2012).
Impact and value of a brand from a number of different stakeholder perspectives
Brand equity can enable companies to set premium prices to their products because customers believe that products with famous names are better than products with unrenowned names. Customer-based brand equity results when customers recognize the brand and hold exceptional brand association in their mind. Adidas has positioned itself as a premium brand and customers are willing to pay more for its products. The positive customer-based brand equity has offered Adidas long-term revenues and capability of charging premium prices for its new products (Angulo-ruiz 2014).
Employees play vital role in developing brand equity. Adidas recognizes its employees as major stakeholders in building the value of its brand. Adidas involves their employees in decision-making process and boost their satisfaction in order to attract the best talent that would help in designing new products. In addition, suppliers aid companies to have excellent reputation in the market. The brand equity of the Adidas Company assists in attracting reliable suppliers who might not be willing to render their services to unbranded firms (Cornell University ILR School 2013).
Organisations marketing campaigns in different international markets
The competitive environment prompts companies to develop marketing campaigns that will increase the brand consciousness and sales. However, due to diversity organisations should tailor their marketing campaigns to suit the international audience when expanding to international markets. The Adidas Company has used different marketing campaigns to promote its X 15 and Ace 15 products in different international markets.
The Adidas has promoted its new products in the US market by utilising online marketing that feature top players of National Hockey League (NHL) and National Football League (NFL). Moreover, the company has initiated major basketball marketing campaigns that resulted to a significant increase in its sales. The online purchasing has made it easy for consumers to purchase products directly from manufactures.
Adidas has adopted online purchasing by placing links on other websites like Google homepage that create high consumer traffic to the company website. The links help to promote product awareness to potential consumers. Furthermore, use of SEO tools to optimize the company website has made it visible to new consumers (Tesseras 2014).
The Adidas has used the Chelsea FC’s players and collaborated with the British Paralympics Association to promote its new products in the UK market. This year Adidas launched a marketing campaign dubbed I am here to create that comprised a sequence of films that featured several sporting celebrities. The marketing campaign aired in fifty countries during broadcast of UEFA champion league and the Grammys awards.
In China market, the campaign featured the local players that have the power of influencing the market. The marketing campaign helped to promote the X 15 and Ace 15 sporting shoes that Adidas launched to the market. Adidas has embraced Web public relations (WPR) by placing news of product or service launches on company’s website and review sites for consumers to read. Furthermore, Adidas uses direct e-mail for its online promotion. Both WPR and direct e-mail have helped adidas in promoting its new products to consumers (Department for culture, media, and sport 2012).
Conclusion
A company success is greatly attributed to the effective role played by is marketing function. Adidas effective marketing planning has guided the company to develop business activities that helps in achieving its organisation objectives. Marketing control systems have aided Adidas to assess its marketing activities and offer swift remedies to detected deviations. The Adidas Company has embraced contemporary marketing techniques, such as social media that have significantly enhanced its new products awareness. Furthermore, the Adidas marketing techniques that are tailored to different international markets have been successful in promoting its new products.
Recommendation
Customers are noted to be satisfied with the design and durability of the Adidas products, however in aspects of price; Adidas should design products that are affordable to deprived customers, especially in developing countries. Moreover, the company can provide special offer of price in a certain period to boost its sales and attract more customers. In addition, Adidas should develop more marketing campaigns and techniques that promote and differentiate its brands from competitors.
| Stakeholder | Negative brand impact Negative brand value | Positive brand impact Positive brand value |
| Employees of the Adidas Group | Universities boycott High wages Worker strikes | Skilled employees, Creative employees |
| Authorisers: government, trade associations, shareholders, Executive Board | Tax laws, Tariffs, Unsound decisions | Tax incentives, Intellectual property law,Strategic decisions |
| Business partners: unions, suppliers, service providers | Low quality materials, Labor laws,Exorbitant prices | Providing quality material and services, Timely deliveries, Affordable prices |
| Workers in our suppliers’ factories | Worker strikes, Demand for higher wages | Skilled workers, Low wages |
| Opinion-formers: journalists, community members, special interest groups | Negative publicity, Use of kangaroo leather, Environmental impacts | Public relation, Product promotion |
| Customers: professional athletes, distributors, retailers, consumers | Consumer switching, Bargaining power, Consumer preferences | Brand loyalty, Product promotion, Product awareness |
| Peers: other multinationals, consumer goods companies and brands | Competition | Partnerships |
Marketing mix for adidas
| Product | Price | Place | Promotion |
| Foot wear,Apparel Accessories | Competitive prices,Skimming price | Exclusive stores,Multi brand showrooms,Online stores | Online marketing,Top player brand ambassadors,Sponsoring teams |
References
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