Adidas

Adidas AG (German pronunciation: [adidas]) (stylized as

dids) is a German multinational corporation that designs and
manufactures sports shoes, clothing and accessories
headquartered in Herzogenaurach, Bavaria. It is the largest
sportswear manufacturer in Europe and the second biggest in the
world.
It is the holding company for the Adidas Group, which consists of
the Reebok sportswear company, TaylorMade-Adidas golf
company (including Ashworth), 9.1% of FC Bayern Munich and
Runtastic, an Austrian fitness technology company. Adidas
revenue for 2012 was listed at 14.88 billion.[2]
Adidas was registered on 18 August 1949 by Adolf Dassler,
following a family feud at the Gebrder Dassler Schuhfabrik
company between him and his older brother Rudolf. Rudolf had
earlier established Puma, which quickly became the business rival
of Adidas and is also headquartered in Herzogenaurach. The
company's clothing and shoe designs typically feature three
parallel bars, and the same motif is incorporated into Adidas's
current official logo. The brand name is appropriately
uncapitalized, with a lower case "a".

Marketing strategy of Adidas

Adidas employs more than 53,731 people in over 160 countries produce
more than 660 million product units every year and generate sales of 14.5
billion (all figures relate to 2014). These numbers alone can easily suggest
that Adidas Group is quite a complex organisation. True. But they keep
things simple, lean and fast.

Segmentation, targeting, positioning in the Marketing

strategy of Adidas Biggest sportswear manufacturer of Europe &
one of the biggest in the world, Adidas is segmented based on demographic,
psychographic & behavioural factors. The Adidas group has four brands in
its strong portfolio Reebok, Adidas, Rockport & taylor made meant for
different segment customer groups. Adidas uses differentiated targeting

strategy to target young adults, adults as well as children who have passion
for fitness & sports. Although it targets customers in the age group of 13-40
years but majority of its customers are of 15-30 years of age who hail from
upper middle class or the luxury class of customers.
User & benefit based positioning are the strategies Adidas uses to create
distinctive image in the mind of the prospective consumer. By emphasizing
the value of quality products from a trusted brand Adidas is able to
maintain its brand essence. The portfolio is divided as follows.
They have Adidas-performance in Competitive sports,
Reebok & Reebok classics in Active sports & casual sports, &
Adidas originals, Adidas Fun, Rockport in Sports fashion.

Mission in the Marketing strategy of Adidas The Adidas

Group strives to be the global leader in the sporting goods industry with
brands built on a passion for sports and a sporting lifestyle. We are
committed to continuously strengthening our brands and products to
improve our competitive position.

Competitive advantage in the Marketing strategy of Adidas

One of the few competitive advantages that Adidas has is its distribution
network, its product quality and its brand equity. Globally it has 2400
stores accounting $4.3 billion business (2014 data). In order to associate
itself with the community it has sponsored many world sport events such as
FIFA, UEFA, NBA, Cricket & Olympics. At the same time, over the years
Adidas has been known to give the best products in the market which are
always comfortable, beyond normal and long lasting.
Strong relationship with the organizations such as International Labour
organization, International Finance Corporation has given the company
edge over competitors for a sustainable business.

Distribution strategy in the Marketing strategy of Adidas

As the consumer environment becomes even more dynamic with trends
quickly changing, Adidas is also increasing its focus on anticipating these
changes and responding with speed. They had aligned their sales with
distribution strategy to enable and propel a heightened consumer-centric

Omni-channel mind-set. After analysing the purchase process of their

customers, they came to conclusion that the interactive experience and the
availability, convenience and the size of the product offerings plays a major
role in a successful distribution strategy. In order to expand their
distribution system they made the products available through Exclusive
stores (franchise model), Co-branded stores who source it from C & N and
distributors.

Branding
Adidas is the closest company to Nike in terms of marketing strategy. The
company focuses heavily on soccer and has a wide variety of apparel and
accessories. They have struggled in the basketball space. Their top two
sponsored players, Derrick Rose and Dwight Howard, have seen drastic
decrease in performance over the past few years. When they were initially
signed, both of these players were arguably in the top 5 best players in the
NBA. After many injuries and disappointing seasons, people in the
basketball community do not look fondly on adidas basketball shoes as they
correlate the injuries of these two superstars to the footwear and
accessories they wear. It seems that adidas has pulled back much of their
marketing efforts in the sport of basketball. Adidas has moved outside of
the sports market with the development of a new shoe that is made almost
entirely from ocean plastic. They hope to attract a new target market with
this product green consumers. They also have discussed plans of
opening a new factory in Detroit to bring new jobs to the city. They hope to
use the projects to win hearts and minds of the people in that part of the
country and hopefully influence them to buy from them.

C0nsumer Segmentation
Standing as one of the most versatile companies in the world Adidas is not
subjected to limited markets of any kind. Big enough to have a web of
readily available products eagerly anticipating the attack of our marketing
mix. Adidas has its hand on almost every person on the planet as far as
potential consumers; producing products that fit almost every demographic
possible. Adidas takes a very cerebral approach to who their target market
is and how it is marketed to them.

Adidas uses common strategies for segmenting various markets. From a

geographical standpoint Adidas uses a tactic referred to as geographic
marketing. Geographic marketing allows Adidas to market specific products
to certain places throughout the world. For example Adidas soccer cleat
commercials and ads are seen more in europe as opposed to america
because soccer isn't as popular or as publicized in The United States as
european and other external countries.
The most successful and most applied segmentation strategy used has
been psychographic segmentation, which appeals to our personalities,
attitudes, motives, and even our lifestyles. For Adidas to aim is to not only
appeal to the younger generation but even to baby boomers as well. With
the use of demographic variables such as age and loaction Adidas is able
to segment their approach to different target markets with ease. Age
segmentation is crucially important as it allows Adidas to market products
to people of the right age group. Like most active and performance gear
brands emphasis is mainly placed on marketing to the younger generation
as individuals who are younger tend to be more increasingly active then
people of older age. Adidas seems to have gender somewhat evenly
marketed, the only thing that may tip the scale is that adidas' mainstream
sporting products are made and marketed for a male dominated crowd, I
wonder what made them believe that women dont like football,baseball and
basketball too.