Adidas is a name of prominent footwear brand which origin belongs to Germany & it’s a large multinational company which drives its business at more than 100 countries. It was established at 1949 by Adolf Dassler in Herzogenaurach, Germany. This is world’s second-largest sportswear manufacturer which designs shoes, clothing & various accessories. To operate its vast production & for managing its marketing sector it uses more than sixty thousand employees all over the world.
4P’s or Marketing Mix of Adidas
Since its opening, Adidas has opened its successful brand substitutes like Reebok, TaylorMade & Runtastic. This brand has its own unique attraction power to enrich its popularity over year by year. This only happened only because of its powerful marketing strategy of its marketing mix.
Product strategy of Adidas
Adidas is widely known for its sportswear products. It mainly offers sports shoes, apparels and accessories to its customers. It invests a lot in research and development to innovate or setting trend as to cope up with new fashion trend of fast world. Adidas has agreements with different celebrities for creating brand awareness. For that reason it offers, exclusive and limited range of sportswear. Adidas always try to focus deeply on design and technology of its products to make it futuristic as to satisfy customer’s wants. This renowned brand introduced 4 subsidiaries named Adidas, Reebok, Runtastic & TaylorMade. These popular brands improves the business strengths of Adidas.
Its signature brand Adidas usually produces cloth and footwear. Reebok is the biggest branch of this company which is in good position rather than Adidas. Rockpot is prominent for outdoor shoes, apparel & accessories. Taylor Made basically focuses on golfing wear, tools, etc. In another sense, cloths are designed for to feel comfort while physical exercise. Shoes, clothing, accessories, sports, and backpack to school are the main focus of Adidas. Each line contains a good number of products. For example, the clothing category includes shorts, trousers, tracksuits, joggers, jackets, sports bras, football shirts etc. This sports oriented giant company basically focuses on sports. Youngsters and sports loving people are the main customers of this product.
Pricing Strategy of Adidas
Adidas is well known for its pricing strategy. It always tries to ensure best quality product with unique style to keep up the momentum. It sets target market based on male, female & kids whose belongs to upper middle class as parallel to High-end. As a result it chooses Competitive and Skimming pricing strategy to become the part of competitive market to grab the market in large. When it introduces its new products for the very first time, it always tries to maintain competitive pricing strategy with thinking about close competitors like Puma, Nike, Reebok and Lotto. Skimming pricing strategy applied when it introduce new products which is uniquely designed and technologically advanced as relative to other brands.
Adidas frequently use skimming rates & placed higher price as to uphold its brand recognition to enrich brand image in customers mind with a hidden message that, Adidas is brand which is a feather of aristocracy. It continues its research & product development to set a new trend in fashion world for holding the introduction title to book zenith position at market. As a result it costs high & set all premium prices on its products. It introduces customized products that are one of the reasons behind why it is less affordable to the customers of developing nations.
Place or Distribution Strategy of Adidas
Place plays a vital role in the context of Marketing Mix. If you have a good quality of product with competitive price range, than you have to have more decorated & easily available place to market your product. So, this company has also smart outdoor which is easily available to many cities in most of the rich countries. Adidas perform its business through offline & online. To perform its business more than 50 countries it has about 700+ factories & nearly 3000 retail outlets globally.
Adidas performs its business with own decorated smart outlets and Multi-brand showroom for selling their products. In today’s fast & digital world, everything comes into touch with online store. Adidas uses e-commerce websites like Myntra.com, Flipkart.com and Amazon.com etc to promote & sell its products. It vastly uses these channels to create awareness & upraise its sells of their new launches footwear, sportswear etc. If we simply the distribution process of Adidas we can see the scenario like Manufacturing > Adidas outlets > End customer or Manufacturing > Distributor > Multi brand showrooms or Manufacturing > Online fashion websites / Adidas website > End customer.
Promotion Strategy of Adidas
The word promotion refers promoting the products you own to create brand awareness. Its well known that, most common type of promotional tools are TV ads, Print media/Magazine ads, social media ads, leaflet, sponsorship, brand ambassador & corporate social responsibility etc. Adidas is not different to not use that common platform but it differs from other to give the messages to the customers to create brand awareness in their mind through different ways with good motto.
TV ads of Adidas companies are always attractive with a good message as this brand mostly related with sports item, that’s why the ads are highly rated to discover strength of inner minds which helps to get long term brand awareness of this brand. The unique promotion tools of this company are product placement. Product placement refers products featuring in movies, television programs & relevant areas. Selecting good images brand ambassadors in related areas are the widely used tools of this company’s promotion criteria such as Lionel Messi. Along with this legend, it vastly depends on other celebrities too for promoting its products to create brand images in customers mind. It frequently uses creative marketing campaign and event marketing. In the era of Social Media, it’s not far behind from using this platform.
Conclusion
At the end, it’s clear that Adidas is a brand which depends on unique form of marketing mix with the help of regular components to become a giant at market. It uses common tools as like as other but apply it in a different way to stay remain in customers mind with its tech based research. It designs & markets its products to cope up with this fastest growing world for competing in the market. Finally it can be said that, marketing mix which is commonly used by common companies is not remain common at Adidas due to its unique strategy & smart thinking.
References
- https://www.adidas.com/us
- https://www.adidas-group.com/en/about/strategy-overview/
- https://www.cvs.edu.in/upload/1st%20May-SME.pdf
- https://www.myquestend.com/business/marketing/marketing-strategy-of-adidas-the-largest-european-sportswear-manufacturer/
