Description of marketing strategies applied by Nike Air Force
4.1 Challenges Forcing Nike to Focus More on Marketing
Sportswear is defined primarily as apparel and footwear made for sports participation, though is now also includes casual clothes worn by people for daily activities (E. Ko, C. R. Taylor, et al., 2012). The sportswear market is one of the most price-competitive markets throughout the globe. Within the UK, items of sportswear are purchased by almost 90% of people under 35 years of age, and by 76% of the population as a whole (Mintel forecasts, 2006). The international sportswear market is worth nearly 41.5 billion US dollars at the wholesale level, with Nike, Adidas, as well Reebok comprising some 14% of this market
4.1.2 The Need to Enhance its Leadership
It has been identified that, over the years, the market is mainly dominated by top brands (as shown in Figure 3). Within the footwear segment, the dominance is however even more concentrated. It is reported that, the top-20 brands still manage to account for some 36% of the global wholesale market (ITGLWF, 2012). Worldwide, the athletic footwear market in worth 17.012 billion US dollars wholesale. And at the retail level, it is worth some 25 billion US dollars. Within this segment market, Nike account for 34% of the 17.012 billion US dollars branded athletic footwear market (Author unknown, 2003). Nonetheless, according to many business specialists, the profitability of selling athletic footwear peaked around 1997 and is not likely to rebound soon (Just-style.com, 2003). As a result, there is lot of gaining and losing of market share (S. Richter, 2001). The profit margin for sportswear brands is not as high as it used to be. Meanwhile, it has been identified in recent years, within the sportswear retailing industry, an annual decrease of sportswear retailing price is experienced by most companies, including Nike, for which, a 2% drop has been Figure 3 World Market For Brand Footwear

(Source: Sporting goods intelligence, 2003) spotted (Sporting Goods Business, 2003) due to the limitation of purchasing power of most customers