About Nike

This case study is based on the mobile application implementation of Nike Company. Nike, Inc. is an American multinational based corporation, which is primarily dedicated towards the engagement of the design, development and manufacturing of innovative kinds of products and services. The company has their majority of their products based within worldwide marketing and perform their sales in various products that includes sales of apparel, footwear, accessories and various other kinds of services. With the expanding of the company, it has shifted their major focus on the implementation of a mobile based application (Schobel et al. 2013). The main purpose of the application is to provide an improved form of business service platform. In the recent times it has been seen that consumers have majorly shifted their focus on the decisions of the consumers who normally prefer to shop for their products with the help of their mobile devices. Hence, the Nike mobile application mainly targets those users who are specialized in the involvement of shopping and exploring newer forms of services and products.  

Background of the Business of Nike

Nike is an American multinational corporation that is mainly involved with the development of newer design of products that could range from apparel, accessories, footwear and other kinds of services. The prime location of the company is based near Beaverton, Oregon that is situated in the metropolitan area of Portland. Nike is regarded as one of the largest supplier of apparel and athletic shoes in the world. Nike is a major form of manufacture based company based on the development of sports based equipment (Lu 2014).

The company was mainly founded by Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman in the year 1964. The name of the company had officially transformed to Nike on May 30, 1971. The company mainly markets their products under their personalized brand names as Nike Pro, Nike Golf, Air Jordan, Nike+, Nike Skateboarding, Air Max and Nike CR7. They also have their subsidiaries, which includes Hurley International, Brand Jordan and Converse. In addition to the manufacturing of different kinds of equipment and sportswear, the company has also their major operations within some of the major retail stores that have also been named under their brand name as Niketown. The company also sponsors different other kinds of products to some of the established and popular sport teams and high-profile athletes in the world (Carr 2013).

In the recent times, there have been a major form of focus on the use of mobile devices. This has surged due to a huge rise in the number of mobile devices in the past few years. The internal team of the company have understood the need for developing a suitable form of mobile application platform that would be able to suffice to the varying needs of the market and thus be able to introduce newer products within the market. There has been a huge level of understanding that consumers would be shifting towards the use of their mobile devices in order to search for various kinds of apparel and shoes. The company would need for excelling in the digital space in order to keep pace with the highly competitive market and thus maintain their dominance within the world market (Valentín and Howard 2013).

Purpose of Nike’s Mobile Application

The mobile application of Nike provides more than just a mere shopping experience to their customers. They offer several newer kind of products within the market in order to track the performance of the application. This highly developed application would help in providing the user with various kinds of facilities. The application would be able to connect with the consumer for providing several kinds of health related tips. The application also provides a store that would supply various kinds of highlighted products, which would be very much essential for attracting the consumers for purchasing from their application (Zhao and Balagué 2015).  

The application that was developed by Nike was initially a form of tracking software and was based on sensors for the use by runners and athletes. In the recent years, the company has also developed various other kinds of applications that are linked to the previous version of the application. The mobile application also helps in keeping a track of the progress of the workouts performed by the athletes and also provides the ability to share their records with others.

The main drivers who have inspired for the building of the application are their customers who mainly depend on the mobile platform for purchasing different kinds of products. The company has a huge level of expectation on the categories of different kinds of sportswear for the purpose of driving growth within the rising and highly competitive markets. The company also has a huge level of expectation from their customers as they would be able to increase the profits of the business. The company is always dedicated towards providing a vast range of products to the athletes who would make use of the mobile based application in order to purchase their products (Haggège, Gauthier and Rüling 2017).

3.1 Details of the Nike Mobile Application

With the huge level of competition in the highly growing market, the company is much more focused towards developing a newer form of mobile application platform (Schobel et al. 2013). The mobile application is dedicated towards providing an improved and interactive platform towards providing various kinds of shopping apparels and fitness accessories to the people who would be interested in sports. The application is extremely interactive and provides a high level of activity. The application platform also helps in connecting the athletes with a personalized store, which would be able to provide customized form of recommendations and various kinds of invitations towards their retail events (El-Amrawy and Nounou 2015).

Target Users of Nike’s Mobile Application

The architecture provided within the development of the Nike mobile application provides some of the core features of architecture. These are mentioned as follows:

Providing Solutions – The mobile application would help in the improvisation of the vision of the company. They would also be able to offer several kinds of technical based solution in relation to the problems faced by the customers. They are also able to deliver solutions based on the cloud based platform. The application also manages a backup of data and analytics for their reference architecture (Incel, Kose and Ersoy 2013).

Innovation – The underlying architecture is capable of adapting to the latest forms of technologies based within the trends of the industry and is thus able to provide a wide range of solutions and products. They are also able to define the future perspectives of the application with the help of a huge level of data mining and analytics process (Ajami and Teimouri 2015).   

The Nike application is designed to satisfy the needs of the users. The mobile application is meant for tracking the various activities regarding the tracking the activities of running, jogging and others. The application is extremely user interactive (Huang, Xing and Wu 2013). It is supported with the help of a GPS and accelerometer, which would help in the activity of tracking. The application has adopted several hints of a shade of brownish-orange, which would make the UI to look lively and attractive. The UI of the application is extremely straightforward and has an ease of usage. With regular updates to the application, Nike also provides newer form of upgrades to the application that would help in motivating the user (Bartley et al. 2013).

Some of the prime benefits of the Nike mobile application are:

Innovative Idea – The application is based on a free platform that allows the user to connect with other people, which would help them to get motivated in activities related to running.

Simple Usage – The application provides simple usability for the users to keep a track of their activities and thus keep a record of their progress. The application also encourages people to use the app in each of their daily activities (Chen and Pu 2014).

Personalization – The application is able to provide customized features to every user with various kinds of major forms of updates. These features are mostly adapted for satisfying the user and providing them with the best ever experience. Weather conditions and localization are some of the important features that are provided within the application for putting an influence over the users.   

Architecture of Nike’s Mobile Application

The company has greatly benefited in the sector of business with the latest form of business strategies and the gained outcomes. Unlike most of the sport based application platforms, the company helps in building an ecosystem for their users with the help of the collected data from the application. Hence they make use of this valuable data for creating several kinds of relevant form of experiences for their users. This would help them in connecting with other athletes and thus would be able to gain much valuable interactions. This would not only expand the growth of the application but would also be able to increase the profits within the business (Turban et al. 2017).

The development of newer form of applications based on mobile platform have eased the way of challenge in the highly competitive market. It has been reported by Nike that the number of mobile traffic has increased to a much higher level in the recent years as more people have shifted to use their application for their daily activities. The mobile marketing technique have increased the user base of the company as they have emerged as a form of profitable channel for the company (Verma and Verma 2013).  

Conclusion

Based on the above discussion, it could be concluded that with the rise of mobile based applications, it has been extremely useful for the business to increase their base of users and promote their application in the newest manner. The business of Nike have made their presence in the online e-commerce market. Different kinds of digital investments have helped in the vast form of experience for the users. They have understood that the mobile market could make a major form of impact on the society and hence various kinds of transformation could be made to be possible within the existing market. The use of mobile application is on the huge rise in the society and hence this has urged Nike to deliver better form of services and bring newer form of innovations within this sector for the huge benefits of the business.

References 

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