Nike Segmentaion Strategy

Nike's "Swoosh" logo is one of the most recognizable in the world. To become one of the most well known companies, Nike understands that every customer has different tastes and chooses products for different reasons (Stonehouse, 2008). Marketing strategies can be broken down into different strategies to help reach potential customers. The strategies are geographic, psychographic, demographic, and behavioral.

Nike's geographic segmentation is broken down from nations all the way down to neighborhoods. The reason for drilling this deep into this market segment is the reach that Nike's products have. Nike's products are sold in 110 countries and Nike has 20,000 retail accounts just in the United States (Carison, 2008). Nike tailors their product mix and marketing strategy to the differences of these groups. American football equipment will have little to no product offerings in countries that do not play the sport. Even though most countries may not have organized American football, many countries watch the sport on the television. The ability to view the sport has created fans for teams and a desire to purchase apparel for those teams. Cricket is much more popular in India than in the United Sates. Nike offers a much wider product line in India for cricket than can be found in the United States. Having this knowledge of the geographic segment allows Nike's suppliers to produce products closer to the areas it is sold. This can help reduce transportation costs to move products (Doorey, 2011).

The United States accounts for Nike's largest portion of sales, but maybe the most diverse market segment. The United States has a number of different professional sports and leagues. There are amateur sports that begin in local middle schools and stretch to colleges. The different regions across the United States develop preferences to sports because of weather and the ability to play as a youth (Stonehouse, 2008).

Geographic segmentation looks at marketing to areas, but the people who make up these areas have social classes, lifestyles and personalities. Psychographic segmentation is the marketing strategy to help personalize products to reach the intended audience (Kotler, 2009). United States in recent years has seen an increase of people starting regular exercise programs. Nike has developed a marketing strategy to attempt to reach people who work out regularly, but may not play an organized sport (Reade, 2011). Nike's product lines are not limited sport specific equipment and apparel. Nike has apparel that people can wear to work in business casual environments. Nike has purchased other brands to help reach customers that may have never purchased a product with the Nike logo. These brands include Bauer, Converse, Hurley International and Starter (Islam, 2010).

Nike's products and marketing are geared towards younger and trendsetting customers. Marketing to this demographic