a)
Adidas meets demand from its digitally driven audience by depending on data analytics (Ramsenthaler, 2018).
- Twitter (Gilliland, 2017).
- ‘Adidas Confirmed’ app (Gilliland, 2017).
- Instagram (Joseph, 2019).
- ‘All day app’ (Beer, 2017).
- Partnerships with Instagram influencers (Calderon, 2018).
- Exasol (Underwood, n.d.).
b)
Innovation, customization and brand status are the three main value propositions offered by Adidas (Cleverism, n.d.). Adidas focuses heavily on prioritizing innovation. Their strategy involves five pillars including Athlete innovation, manufacturing innovation, digital and experience innovation, sustainability innovation, and female athlete innovation. Based on the athlete innovation initiative, Adidas partners with sportspeople, organizations and universities to create advanced features for their product development process (Cleverism, n.d.).Clearly, reaching out for groundbreaking ideas has provided exceptional results. Boost, which provides maximum comfort and energy return for athletes, ClimaChill, the apparel with active cooling within the fabric, and ClimaHeat which allows higher amounts of warm air to be trapped within the fabric, made especially for cold weather training are a few examples of past innovations. Moreover, to provide customization, Adidas allows its consumers to personalize their items from colors, sizes, font types, team name, player name, and artwork/graphics. (Cleverism). As a customer, being able to purchase a product that meets my needs and wants 100% since I have the ability to custom make it before paying, is fulfilling. This is known as engagement marketing. Frost & Strauss (2014) found that, the best engaging activities that an organization can offer is to “help consumers build a personal association with the brand, such as when they can customize the product” (p. 184). Further, Adidas’s vigorous pursuit to success is very attractive to its consumers and as a result has strengthened their brand name. According to Cleverism (n.d.) Adidas “is one of the world’s oldest shoe brands, the largest athletic footwear/apparel producer in Europe, and the second biggest in the world after Nike”.
Adidas is unique in the market as they have used the past as inspiration for the future of their organization. The implementation of a marketing decision “to recreate historical shoe models, which were made popular in the 70s and 80s by high-performance athletes, with modern high quality materials”, resulted in success for Adidas.
References
Beer, J. (2017, July 10). Why Adidas is going beyond fitness with its new “All Day” lifestyle app. Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/40438927/why-adidas-is-going-beyond-fitness-with-its-new-all-day-lifestyle-app
Calderon, E. (2018, March 4). Adidas shapes the future of customer experience with digital. Retrieved from https://www.expertvoice.com/adidas-shapes-future-customer-experience-digital/
Cleverism (n.d.). Careers at Adidas Group. Retrieved by https://www.cleverism.com/company/adidas-group/
Frost, R. & Strauss, J. (2014). E-marketing. (7th Ed.) Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson.
Gilliland, N. (2017, February 6). How Adidas originals uses social media to drive sales. Retrieved from https://econsultancy.com/how-adidas-originals-uses-social-media-to-drive-sales/
Gilliland, N( 2017, May 11). How Adidas uses digital to enable powerful experiences. Retrieved from https://econsultancy.com/how-adidas-uses-digital-to-enable-powerful-experiences/
Joseph, S. (2019, May 7). It’s having a positive impact: Instagram is driving Adidas’ online sales. Retrieved from https://digiday.com/marketing/its-having-a-positive-impact-instagram-is-driving-adidas-online-sales/
Ramsenthaler, P. (2018, October 30). On the ball: 4 Reasons for Adidas’ long-term success. Retrieved from https://www.marmind.com/en/on-the-ball-4-reasons-for-adidas-long-term-success/
Underwood, J. (n.d.) How Adidas transformed analytics platforms for digital scale. Retrieved from https://www.jenunderwood.com/2017/06/14/adidas-analytics-platforms-digital-scale/
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