1.

INTRODUCTION:

This case study focused on studying the various marketing strategy of Adidas. Adidas is
a large and very popular sports company.Established in Germany in 1949 by Adolf Dassler. One
of the largest sports brands in the world employing over 46000 employees around the globe. It
ranks second after the Nike company. This company is manufacturing sports goods. Today,
the Adidas company is a very large network of sportswear sales. Its shops are in many
countries, there are many retail outlets, manufacturing companies located in Indonesia, China,
Thailand, Germany. Each year, the company gets a big turnover, which amounts 6 billion Euros.
All this data suggests that this is one of the largest, most expensive and reliable company in the
world.Every organization must look at its marketing in relations to the marketing mix. The
marketing mix, often referred to as the 4Ps, is means of assessing how to balance the elements
of the marketing mix in order to meet customers needs. The elements include the rights
products, sold at the right price, in the right place and using the most suitable form of promotion.
keys challenge for Adidas marketing strategies is finding innovative ways to inspire and engage
its 14-19 year old target audience. London 2012 gave Adidas company a platform to target this
audience but with a global reach. The sponsorship deal obtained by Adidas was the broadest
set of sportswear rights in Olympic history.

2.0

THE CASE STUDY

2.1

The elements that make up the marketing mix:

The marketing mix is often referred to as the 4Ps, example product, price, place and
promotion. It is to meet customers needs a business must develop products to satisfy them,
charge the right price, get the goods to the right place, and it must make the existence of the
product known through promotion.

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(PRODUCT)
Products and brands may suggest certain images such as Adidas company, shows the
sporty images. The Adidasproduct under the shopping classification product. The shopping
classification products is consumer products that customer compares carefully on suitability,
quality, price and style. Adidas has various products. The major product of Adidas is their
footwear. Their footwear coming in various design and style. The Adidas footwear is robust or
heavily built and athletic. The secondary product of Adidas is apparels and accessories.
Apparels lie T-shirts, jackets, sweatshirts, shorts and etc are in great demand.

The aim of Adidas is to give the best footwear to their customers which has the
combination of technology and design. These products are not need based. In fact, the shoes
are bought by customers to satisfy their wants and desires. Similarly, the apparels are targeted
towards comfort during heavy or adventure activities. However, although the main target is
sports, the apparels are frequently used as a style statement by youngsters and athletics.

The branding of Adidas is the brand and a leader in the sporting goods market. Adidas
approach to position themselves as a brand for people who want success and they used great
athletics, wearing Adidas products. They try to convince average people that they will be
successful if they wear the right clothes. The example of product and the logo of Adidas is
shown in appendix 1 and 2.

(PRICE)
Like any company who has successfully, Adidas price strategy that willuses of skimming
prices as well as competitive pricing. The skimming prices is launching with a high price when
there is little competition, then reducing the price later. Often used with technology. For run of
the mill products, Adidas uses competitive pricing keeping in mind competitors like Nike,
Reebok and Puma. The competitive pricing is a similar price is charged to that of competitors
products. But for products which are newly introduced in the market and are uniquely designed,
Adidas uses skimming price.

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Apparels of Adidas constantly use skimming price and are higher priced due to brand
equity of Adidas in the apparels market. The target customer for Adidas is the upper middle
class as well as high end customers. Adidas never uses penetrative pricing because that will
affect the brand equity of Adidas.In fact, the higher price point helps in the price quality
approach and psychologically, customers think that a higher price will mean better quality as
well. For a lot of consumer, value and price are highly related. The higher the price, the higher
the value.Thus, Adidas rarely drops its prices.

(PLACE)
Adidas entered the markets in various ways. The major areas in which Adidas is sold is
through retail outlets. Adidas has its own exclusive stores in which the material is provided
directly from the company. On the other hand, many multi brand showrooms will also have
Adidas apparels and footwear on display. These multi brand showrooms get the products from
a distributor. The third and last mode of distribution is online. The products are sold through
online medium via fashion stores lie myntra.com as well as the online website of Adidas. Thus
the distribution channel of Adidas is as follows:
1) Manufacturing

Adidas outlets

End customer

2) Manufacturing

Distributor

3) Manufacturing

Online fashion websites/ Adidas website

Multi brand showrooms

End customer

(PROMOTION)
Adidas always use the acronym of AIDA in their promotion. AIDA stands for awareness,
interest, desire and action.Adidas markets through various marketing medium but the majority of
marketing is concentrated on television and product placements. The creative team of Adidas is
known to pump adrenaline in their customers through advertising which are well made, very
creative and filled with energy. These advertising attract the customers towards the brand by
sending the right marketing message to the customer. The tagline of Adidas Impossible is
nothing is in itself a very powerful statement for the brand.

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After television, product placement is the second line of promotion for Adidas. The
popularity of the brand is because it ties up with the top players across the world such as Lionel
messi, Ronaldinho, Sachintendulkar and various others. At the same time, Adidas also sponsors
teams and some of the top teams include Real Madrid, France, Great Britain (in football),
England and South Africa (in cricket) and several others. Adidas alsoincludes some very
creative outdoor campaigns as well as events marketing.

2.2

The sponsorship:

The term sponsorship means a company invest money of support a large festival and
makes some advantages to publish the branding. While sponsorship can deliver increased
awareness, brand building and propensity to purchase, it is different from advertising. Unlike
advertising, sponsorship cannot communicate specific product attributes. Nor can it stand alone, as
sponsorship requires support elements.

The name of sponsorship deal that was effective, for example, Adidas company
sponsorship deals with the Olympic games that are very expensive. Adidas invest a lot of
money for holding 2012 London Olympic Games. This sponsorship is important because
London is the main market for Adidas, to become the Official Sportswear Partner of the London
Games and the exclusive licenses of all branded and event brand clothing, that will helps Adidas
a lot.

When Adidas company do the sponsorship and get the branding, Adidas set four
benefits that they want to achieve, that will be all the benefit. First, Adidas want to ensure a
clear association as Sport Partner of London 2012, Team GB and Paralympics GB. Second
benefits is to engage and excite the 14-19 year old audience in order to drive brand preference

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in the UK. The third, Adidas want to deliver a Licensed product return on investment (ROI) and
lastly Adidas want to become the most talked about sports brand.

2.3

The important of using both above-the-line and below-the-line promotion

for an effective marketing campaign:

(Above-the-line)
The main aims of above-the-linepromotion are to inform customers, raise awareness
and build brand positioning. Above-the-line tends to have a higher cost since the promotional
methods used are less precise.

This type of promotion reaches a wide audience, is not specific to individual consumers
but it can be difficult to measure and assess its impact. It can be used both to inform the
audience and raise awareness of a product or service, as well as to persuade people to buy.
Above-the-line advertising tries to reach out to the mass as consumer audience.The another
important of using above-the-line is used to generate mindshare. It bringing the company or a
new product to the attention of consumers

(Below-the-line)
Below-the-line promotion aims to reach consumers more directly through forms of
communication other than traditional advertising channels. It is also very specific activities
targeted to a select group of consumers and often includes experiential marketing. The
anotherimportant of using below-the-line is targeted to the customers needs and wants through
very specific communication or activities and also social media is generally a large component
of below-the-line success.

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Both types of marketing are important to the success of a business. However, it is

important for brands to recognize that below-the-line marketing is less expensive and where the
future of marketing lies. As consumers become more and more wary of large scale marketing,
brands will need to find creative ways to reach out and build lasting relationships with
consumers.

2.4

The effectiveness of Adidas using of social media in its Take the stage
campaign:

Using of sosial media in the campaign is a new trends to attract the consumers
tosupport. It become more attractive medium to do any campaign. The social media such as on
Facebook and Twitter, the messages with the highest engagement were the ones with a video
element, followed by messages with a static image. Messages with just text were the least
effective from a social engagement perspective.

Social media played an important part in Adidas campaign. Adidas doing it camping on
social media such as upload the videos on YouTube. The effectiveness of this it created of
millions of views and the videos of peoples reactions to David Beckham making a surprise
appearance at photo booth received 3.2 million views, as well as international TV coverage.
Adidas also doing the campaign through the Twitter. When Adidas doing their campaign on
Twitter #takethestage, the results of the campaign is it became the summer trend for supporting
team GB.

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3.0

CONCLUSION

An organizations marketing mix is its own way to uniquely position the brand and drive
sales. For Adidas, this includes understanding what its consumers want and producing
innovative products that fulfill these needs. Using innovative methods of sports marketing, on a
scale never before seen in the industry, enabled Adidas to target the youth audience in London
and around the world whilst also having a global reach through social media and online
promotion.

Sponsorship deals such as Adidas heritage with the Olympic Games are very
expensive. However, as this case study shows, through well planned marketing strategies with
clearly defined objectives they can offer a way of creating deeper engagement with consumers.
Adidas target consumers and created huge amounts of support for them, during and after the
Games.

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4.0

REFERENCES
Books:
Goodman, Fandt, Michlitsch and Lewis (2007). Management
Challenges For Tomorrows
Leaders, International Student Edition, Thompson SouthWestern.
Kamran Kashani and Dominique Turpin (2002). Marketing
Management,
International Marketing Series, Palgrave Macmillian.
AngHuat Bin (2011). Business Management, Oxford Fajar Polytechnic
Series,
Oxford FajarSdn. Bhd.
Websites:
Richa, (2014, May 27). Elements to succeed in the marketplace
Available at

https://www.udemy.com/blog/service-marketing-mix /

Sebastian S.Vlasich, (2012, January 11). Adidas- A global sport

strategy Available at
wearedevelopment.net/2012/01/11/adidas-a-global-sports
strategy/
Adidas Group, (2010, August 02). Adidas Group History Available at
http://www.adidas-group.com/en/ourgroup/history.aspx
Jim Riley, (2011, January 02). What is the difference between above
and below the line?
Available at www.tutor2u.net/blog/index.php/business
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5.0

APPENDICES

APPENDIX 1:
(PRODUCTS OF ADIDAS)

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APPENDIX 2:
(LOGO OF ADIDAS)

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