Under Armour’s Strategy Identifying influencing factors of a company’s macro-environment helps in the strategic development and management within a company. The macro-environment outlines an industry and the competitive environment as seen in figure 3.1, (Gamble, Peteraf, Thompson, 39). Within the macro-environment there are the political factors, economic conditions, sociocultural forces, technological factors, environment forces, and legal/regulatory factors. All of these factors blanket the habitat an industry and its competition thrive in. Inside the industry and competitive environment there are five factors that influence an individual company. The five factors are suppliers, rival firms, new entrants, buyers, and substitute products. The biggest impact on a company are these five factors. For example, Under Armour focuses on their industry and competitive environment to survive and grow. Their strategy to win over the market share from Nike and Adidas consists of expanding a stable and original brand within record time, taking an innovative approach to their product line-up and brand-name appeal where the market seemed to be barren, and lastly, the company enters in the foreign market early on to establish its brand and influence markets outside of the US. The strength of the competitive forces vary among the Under Armour, Nike, and The Adidas Group. The buyer bargaining power of Under Armour, is somewhat weak. Under Armour’s growth strategy entails, “Securing
1. Macro environment analysis: the major externals which affect company’s decision making, marketing strategy and performance. It includes:
Competitors in the industry can wreak havoc on the bottom line for a company. With rivals, a price competition usually ensues, which benefits the customers but hurts the competing businesses that share a common strategy. In reviewing rival sellers, many competitors exist within the sports apparel and footwear industry, but most of them are unable to compete with the industry giants, Nike and Adidas. They are well seated in the industry and their sales reveal this ultimate strength, however, Under Armour is putting pressure on these mammoths. In 2015, global sales of sports clothing and footwear equated to $250 billion, of which Nike grabbed $30.6 billion, Adidas held in its grasp $18.8 billion and Under Armour had a much smaller piece of the pie, at $3.9 billion globally. In reviewing these numbers, it looks like Under Armour is really subpar to the industry giants, but this is not exactly the case. Under Armour in the past couple of
Macro environment or macro forces consists of the larger societal factors that have the potential to affect an organization’s strategies. According to Phillip Kotler, these variables include demographic, economic, natural, technological, political, and cultural outside forces. (“Josbd”, n.d, para. 7)
The Rivalry among competing sellers of sporting goods such as Under Armour, Nike, and Adidas-Reebok is strong and likely to intensify. The rivalry among sporting good sellers of energy will keep growing and will become stronger in coming years. Under Armour. Nike, and Adidas-Reebok have similar or competing product offerings and that is why competition among them is so high. If these companies want to stay in business they need to come up with different strategies that will set them apart from the opposition. Competition is intense and revolves around performance,
Under Armour has proven year over year that they are indeed a growth company. As their brand recognition and product availability increases so do their revenues. Under Armour achieved a growth in net revenue by over 18 percent, increased net income by 22 percent (suggesting financial discipline) all leading to their ability to sustain growth year over year (Under Armour 10K, 2009). This considerable increase in net revenue is attributed to an increase in apparel and the introduction of footwear in the first quarter of 2009 (2009). Although Under Armour has only been around 14 years they have only been traded publicly since 2005 (2009).
1. We chose to study Under Armour because of their explosive growth over the last five years in a very competitive industry. From a marketing standpoint, it is quite apparent that the company is doing well and one could assume that because the firm appears to have had great success in aggressively expanding their market share, they are by extension creating value for investors. By studying the financial information, we aimed to confirm or deny whether Under Armour is indeed creating value.
Under Armour was founded in 1996 and is known as a leading developer, marketer, and distributor of branded performance apparel, footwear and accessories. Under Armour’s target market is athletes on the professional and collegiate level as well as consumers with active lifestyles. The company’s widely recognized brand is known for performance an authenticity, and is an alternative to traditional natural fiber products and non-performance apparel and footwear. The case analysis performed will evaluate the company’s vision and mission statement, internal and external situation, possible strategy options going forward, and recommendations for the company.
It is a newer company to a highly competitive industry like Nike and Adidas. Under Armour was founded in 1996 and started to offer footwear in 2006. Therefore, the company only has a limited market share in the market According to Trefis Team (2015), “In U.S., from where the company earns nearly 90% of its revenues, the Under Armour brand only has a 2.5% share of the market. Compared to this, Nike has nearly 25% of the global sports footwear market and 60% of the U.S. sports footwear market including the Jordan and Converse brands”. From the rate, we can know that the market share for Under Armour is very little compare to Nike. Some consumer might don’t even know this brand. However, there is high brand recognition for their competitors such as Adidas and Nike. Market share is crucial factor that impact to the business profitability. With a large portion of market share, the company can lead to greater business
Twenty years ago, Nike would have taken Under Armour’s lunch money and sent them packing. This is the fate that Converse, Reebok, and Adidas experienced when they tried to take on the Nike Swoosh. The one thing that has kept Under Armour a float and on
The competence of the Under Armour, Nike, and The Adidas Group are energetic and can be maintained continuously. All of three companies focus on the development, marketing and distribution of branded performance apparel, footwear, and accessories for men, women and youth. In one hand, they both have a large powerful brand image and benign reputation, in the other hand,
Under Armour is a company that always strives to do better. They are currently trying to expand globally. While Under Armour has higher quality than most of its competitors, the cost of their merchandise is still a lot less than competitors. There are many threats to a highly-competitive sports clothing company such as Under Armor. Like many companies in the retail industry they are faced with the increasing costs of their materials and shipping expenses. Under Armour is trying to connect to the middle class more, by trying to make their merchandise as affordable as possible. Fortunately, for Under Armour, customers are focusing more on the quality of the merchandise, not the price. This company has many
In this Case study, we will mainly be looking towards the strategic analysis of Under Armour its potential profitability, success and failures. Since its innovation the technology has been copied by almost all the major competition. Now Armour has a 3% market share and how it was able to even get this share would be discussed in more detail in this paper. Later we would discuss the Strengths and Weakness for Under Armour and conclude this paper with recommendation of various strategic alternatives that are possible.
Micro and Macro - Marketing Environment (Political, Cultural, Technological, Natural, Legal and – micro - employee, suppliers, competitors, customer, general people and intermediators are directly linked with the company and influence
Macro factors incorporate economic, demographic, social, and cultural trends, regulations and resource availability and micro factors subsume competition, suppliers, public, and customers (Tanner & Raymond, 2011, p. 28). Acute firms will take advantage of opportunities by playing to their strengths.
Other environmental influences, such as competition, may fuel the company’s desire to create more and better products that could well determine their location and standing in the global market. Increase in the number of competitors for the same line of products may mean that there