INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

International Business

Table of Contents

Introduction3

Nike Corporation4

Nike's Competition6

SWOT Analysis8

Strengths8

Weaknesses10

Opportunities11

Threats12

Nike's Marketing Strategy13

IT risk management15

Threat to Nike's E-Commerce Strategy16

Recommendations to improving Nike's online marketing17

Conclusion21

References23

International Business

Introduction

The twenty-first-century realities of globalization, rapid changes in technology, increasing competition, the changing workforce, changing market and economic conditions, and developing resource shortages all increase complexity of modern management. Whereas strategic planning was the competitive advantage in past decade, it is the necessity of global thinking in this century. Planning strategically is certainly the new requirement in global business world. In order to survive new business challenge, global thinking and practice must permeate all corporate activities. Successful companies are, of course, first to consider global marketplace as their arena for competition. According to Peters (1993), strategic management has become the vital part of most, if not all, organizations. "Almost all organizations of any reasonable size have some kind of strategic planning."

The athletic footwear and apparel industries are very attractive, providing an excellent opportunity to create above average returns. Manufacturers such as Adidas, New Balance, Nike, Puma, and Reebok are only few successful companies in business. More important behind this success is way companies implement and perform strategic management considering internal and external environment approaches. The athletic footwear, apparel and equipment industry is keenly competitive in United States and on the worldwide basis.

The emergence of different apparel corporation has mirrored sky-rocketing popularity of sports, athletes, and personal athletic activity in late twentieth century. These brands had fueled the great deal of this popularity, particularly by employing athletes as product spokespeople and infusing world of sports with vast amounts of capital.

Nike experienced tremendous growth between early 1970s and late 1990s, dominating global athletic footwear and apparel market. Its success had been fueled by use of low wage labor in developing countries, accompanied by highly acclaimed marketing strategies and advertising campaigns. However, in mid 1990s Nike began facing fierce criticism of its business practices in both of these spheres - production and marketing. In 1998, Nike revenues and stock prices dipped by nearly 50 percent, and company were forced to layoff 1600 workers (Egan, 1998).

Nike Corporation

Nike Corporation was incorporated in 1968. In their thirty-four year history, Nike has primarily been in business of designing, developing, and marketing athletic footwear, apparel, equipment and accessories (Mattison, 2002). Many companies, goes out on the limb when it comes to business decision or management strategies including Nike Corporation. Nike is an influential company. Nike Corporation is the well managed company in an attractive industry, company has the strong brand image, and they are effectively capturing value created from their investment. Modern advanced ways to make products are important in today's Apparel companies, both to be efficient and to be able to make hi-tech products. Nike is dependent upon high technology in their effort to stay ahead of their competitors and produce products. These technologies are found within computers, used to create, design and develop products and machines that actually make shoes. Besides these main areas of technology such the large corporation also uses the lot of ...