Many american companies have pulled out, but Nike stayed in. The thing was, that Nike company didn’t acctualy own the factories. So all that Phil said to the public was: „There are some things that we can control, but there are also some that we can not.“
Nike could easily increase the wage level of many workers. The cost of making the wages of indonesian workers dobled could be recoverd just by showing two less adverts in media per week. Nike sells their shoes for different prices in different places all around the world. The true value of the brand can be determined by how much a mark up costumer will pay for it. People buy it because they want to look different. If they get seen wearing an expensive shoe, they feel like they must be an exclusive person. Mostly young people are really victims in the aggresive marketing campaign of Nike. The 2 main elements towards sucess for Nike have so far been the Shoe and the Manufacturing. The third element in the success of nike’s achievement has been it’s novel approach to Marketing:
Phil Knight once said: „ Nike didn’t have enough money to take out an advertisment on the back page of Sport Illustrated but we do have enough money to get on the cover and that is by getting an athlete good enough to be on the front cover of the magazine wearing the swoosh. That is the best king of ad we can get. During the 1970s the swoosh began to appear on the clothing of top athletes. Using individual sports stars to endorse products was nothing new, but Nike took it to new hights. McEnroe was the perfect Nike guy. He had an attitude. He was anti-establishment and he was briliant. He was a rebel. Eric Cantona was another one. In 1950s the aerobics became in a fashion. This meant a first setback for Nike company. Reebok came up with fashionable footwear that women liked a lot. Nike tried to be flexible and also came up with shoes of this kind. But without the success. Now nike was producing different kinds of shoes, but nothing went right. So Mr. Knight had to decide what was going to be his target market. Phil Knight refocused the brand on pure sport and reorganised the company. The help came in the form of Sonny Vercaro, who was a basketball scout. He introduced Nike to a talented college basketball player by the name of Michal Jordan. Nike saw Jordans potential, so they closed the contract for $500 000. And this contract got worth it.