Marketing Analysis How NikeID Strengthens and Accentuates the Global Nike Brand

Nike is considered the leading provider of athletic wear, shoes and equipment globally, and is perennially also listed as one of the top fifty most valuable brands in the world. Its supply chain spans over 52 nations and over 80% of its products are produced in Asian nations where product uniformity and lack of variation is essential to achieve production efficiency (Nike Investor Relations, 2013). As of today Nike operates production centers in 42 nations, has 774 direct and contract factories in production, and over 1 million workers who are both direct employees and those of contractors (Nike Investor Relations, 2013). Nike has had to build a production network to this scale to support the many product liens they sell today. The company's marketing has concentrated on aligning their iconic brand with providing customers with the athletic apparel they need to excel in their chosen sports and leisure activities. What's been missing from their brand messaging is the opportunity for the customer to participate in defining their own experience and product. Nike's iconic brand can support selling millions of shoes a year yet didn't fully deliver on the possibility of creating greater customer loyalty through the purchasing and product use experiences (Deng, 2009). To hold on and grow their most profitable customers, Nike had to deliver a more effective online experience than just a typical website. The answer to this challenge was creating the NikeID product strategy and website which provides Nike customers with the opportunity to create highly customized, build-to-order shoes to meet their exacting requirements. NikeID is managed as a separate business complete with its own analytics and dashboards (Nike Investor Relations, 2013).

NikeID...

The promise of improved athletic performance is inherent in all Nike products, yet the precise aligning of product attributes to a given customers' unique needs accentuates and strengthens that connection with every customer who chooses a mass customized product (Senanayake, Little, 2010). As Nike generates over 60% of revenue from loyal customers who repurchase and use their products, the need for bringing customers into the design process of their own apparel is critical to future growth (Nike Investor Relations, 2013).
To address this issue Nike chose to define a global product strategy that allowed for customers to be the co-creators of their own shoes, while also presenting a high quality, intuitive and easily customized website experience. What's unique about NikeID from a website perspective is that the site itself is a direct representation of how flexible Nike has designed and executed the actual production strategy to support this marketing strategy. The following is a screen capture of the American English version of the NikeID website as of November, 2013.

Figure 1: NikeID website (American English Configuration)

The marketing strategy behind this website is aimed at giving every customer the opportunity to have their own unique identity, supporting their own unique personal brand. The integration of Nike's manufacturing prowess with their branding and marketing expertise is further exemplified in the workflows supporting shoe customization. For Nike to make this product promise to customers and be able to deliver on it, they needed to define the specific…