Nike and Stp

Introduction
In current competitive marketplace where diverse companies create more intense competition in business world, positioning appears to be more a critical matter in the sustainability of a company. Mazzarol and Soutar (2007) affirm that coherent and consistent strategy of positioning is an important issue for an organization to succeed in modern business. Positioning is defined as a way the product is defined by consumers on important attributes—the place the product occupies in consumers mind relative to competing products (Kotler, Brown, Adam, Burton & Armstrong, 2007).
Company Background–Nike, Inc.
Nike, Inc. is the largest sports and fitness company in the world founded in 1964 by Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight. Nike is based in Beaverton, OR and employs more than 24, 300 people world wide and includes brands such as Cole Hann, Bauer, Hurley and Converse. Nike operates on six continents with suppliers, shippers, retailers and service providers employing close to 1 million people. It provides athletic footwear, clothing, and equipment and is one of the most recognized supplier worldwide of these products. (source: Nike, 2009)
Nike in Segmenting and Targeting
Before positioning its product, a company should segment and target their markets. Likewise, based on research by Dawes (2008) and Tong & Hawley (2009), the youth market is particularly important to Nike and its customers are tended to be young, highly educated, single, and with moderate to high incomes. However, focusing on specific target group may be counterproductive, as it may actually constraint the ability of the brand to grow (Dawes, 2008). Therefore, Nike uses the marketing segmentation strategy which is called mass customization, where customization implies that each buyer is viewed as a potentially unique segment and have unique needs (Cant, Strydom, Jooste & Plessis, 2009). With this basis, Nike launched a new website called NikeID, where customers can select to “customize and...