Nike Changes Habits Of Sports And Consumption

On the day of "P eleven", when everyone was focusing on Tmall, Nike launched a low-end Nike+ Run Club for runners on WeChat.

< /p >

On the line of P only 10 days, the account of "a href=" http://www.91se91.com/ "running fans < /a" attracted 16124 followers, and formed a running group function through the account built-in. These users quickly created more than 1000 running WeChat groups.

< /p >

The result of "P > is far beyond the official expectation of Nike.

The WeChat test is actually another case of Nike in the past year's many initiatives in the Internet and digital field.

< /p >

After P 2010, the domestic sporting goods market suffered a whole industry recession.

The problem of inventory has plagued almost every company in the industry, and Nike is no exception.

< /p >

< p > however, although cleaning up inventory and channel adjustment has caused every enterprise to be battered, Nike is still free to push forward another important work, that is to promote its own digital sports platform Nike+.

< /p >

< p > 2013 is the year when Nike's digitalization strategy took root in China.

Nike began to vigorously promote its digital platform Nike+ in large and small offline activities.

After nearly a year's efforts, Nike's digital platform has experienced explosive growth.

The exclusive value of business value shows that as of October this year, the number of registrations in the Nike+ online community increased by 130% in the Greater China market, while the number of applications downloaded by Nike on the mobile side increased from 570 thousand last year to 2 million 580 thousand, an increase of 350%.

< /p >

There is only one purpose behind these p efforts: to make Chinese consumers move again.

< /p >

< p > Nike is using the mobile Internet as a weapon to get online and offline, so that more partners can participate in sports activities in person.

This is Nike's O2O.

< /p >

< p > < strong > changing sports and consumption habits < /strong > < /p >

In the eyes of many domestic peers, Nike's implementation of the Internet and digitalization strategy is a thankless task, because these efforts can not directly promote Nike's sales. Huang Xiangyan, director of communications in Nike Greater China, has also admitted to commercial value that Nike itself does not expect these efforts to directly boost sales growth. P

< /p >

< p >, why does Nike have to do this? < /p >

To understand the significance behind Nike's digital strategy, we must first understand the changes in the environment facing the sporting goods market. < p >

The root cause of the whole industry recession in the past 3 years is actually the change of people's consumption and exercise habits.

< /p >

In the past 20 years, the boundaries between sports brand and fashion brand in P market are rather vague.

Especially before the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, with the concept of Olympic Games being promoted, people's enthusiasm for sports was high, and the days of sports brands were quite moist.

< /p >

< p > however, many people have overlooked the fact that in the prevailing market environment, consumers who bought "a href=" http://www.91se91.com/news/index_q.asp "sports brand" < /a > products were not due to good sports habits, but a pair of sports such as a href= "http://www.91se91.com/" target= "_blank" > shoes "/a" and a sportswear were probably the main disguise of his work and daily life.

For these consumers, buying a sportswear and buying a casual wear is essentially the same. It is only because of the impact of the prevailing environment that many people are more inclined to buy sports brand products.

< /p >

< p > with the end of the Beijing Olympic Games, the good days of sports brands in China have come to an end.

The increase of national income leads to consumers' a href= "http://www.91se91.com/" target= "_blank" > clothing < /a > demand begins to subdivide, and consumers gradually become "fastidious".

In the first-line market, sports a href= "http://www.91se91.com/" target= "_blank" > dress less than /a is no longer a part of consumers' daily wear. The rising fast fashion brands quickly diverted the original customer groups belonging to sports brands.

< /p >

This change in consumption habits has led to the imbalance between supply and demand in the sporting goods market, followed by a 3 year long recession in the whole industry. P

< /p >

< p > however, this round of recession is not a bad thing. It will help the sports brands to select the real core sports consumers.

Although the overall demand for sports products is on the decline, at the same time, in the second tier cities, more and more white-collar workers begin to pay attention to their health and begin to participate systematically in sports consciously.

< /p >

The example below "P" may help you to better understand the changes in the current Chinese sporting goods market: 10 million of the population originally bought sports brands, but only 1 million of them had real sports habits and sports needs.

Today, due to market segmentation and other reasons, the consumption of sports brand has dropped to 5 million, but 2 million of them have good exercise habits.

< /p >

< p >, therefore, for sports brand, there are two challenges to be faced at present: one is how to serve the sports population with higher gold content.

The two is how to expand the base of the core sports crowd.

Nike chose to use the Internet as a weapon to meet these challenges.

< /p >

"P >" Nike may not be able to open stores in every city, but such a platform can bring Nike to every consumer.

And bring every consumer to us. "

Huang Xiangyan said, "Nike is a company that focuses on teenagers, so it's very important to learn to communicate with them in the way of young people."

< /p >

< p > < strong > borrow WeChat public number < /strong > /p >

< p > Nike has always been an innovative enterprise. In the past 30 years, it has been guiding the development of the whole industry at the technical level.

Today, the company is no longer satisfied with selling a pair of sports shoes to consumers. It has begun to set a bigger mission for itself to help users move more scientifically and systematically.

< /p >

< p > "in addition to providing products, what we most want to do now is to provide services.

The so-called service is to make users' cognition of brand and sport more complete.

Huang Xiangyan explained the meaning of Nike+ to "commercial value".

< /p >

< p > for a sports brand, if you want to achieve the above goals, the prerequisite is to understand how your users are moving.

< /p >

< p > over the past 3 years, Nike has launched a number of products to quantify user movement: in 2010, it launched Nike+Running, a mobile phone for runners. In 2011, it launched a sports watch with GPS positioning function. In 2011, Nike even introduced the wearable device, the Sports Wristband Fuelband. In October this year, it further released the second generation product, Fuelband SE, which also marked Fuelband being incorporated into Nike's regular product line. In the early November, Nike's daily activity record tailored for iPhone dynamic collaborative processors built in iPhone 5S was also officially launched.

{page_break} < /p >

< p > Nike can begin to guide users to participate in sports more effectively when the motion data in the real world is quantized to the virtual world.

Through the medal and incentive mechanism, Nike can make users' movements more systematic and regular, and users can understand their daily sports at a glance.

< /p >

< p > but it is not enough to do this. In the Chinese market, Nike wants to regain its lost territory and try to rekindle the enthusiasm of consumers.

Nike hopes to achieve this goal through social networking.

< /p >

< p > as in the level of information dissemination, there are opinion leaders who can lead public opinion. In the world of sports, everyone in the social circle also has sports talents.

Nike hopes to take these sports as the core and drive more people in the circle of friends to participate in sports.

< /p >

< p > using social media and tools for marketing is no longer a new means. In overseas markets, Nike has long been able to connect its core product Nike+Running with social networking products such as Facebook and Twitter. Users can share their sports records on social media after the campaign.

In China, the alternative to international social media is Sina micro-blog and QQ space.

Pan Shiyi is probably the most famous Nike+Running user in China. In the past two years, Pan Shiyi has been drying out his running performance on micro-blog for a time, and has become Nike's unofficial designated spokesperson.

< /p >

< p > however, sharing your running performance is just a rather elementary way. With the decline of micro-blog's activity, Nike began to explore new ways. This is the background of the Nike+ Run Club public account on WeChat platform.

< /p >

< p > this is not the first time Nike launched its promotion based on WeChat. Nike has opened its own public account almost a year ago, but pushing brand news and product information has never been Nike's highly respected user communication mode, so Nike has been looking for WeChat promotion methods that match its brand tonality.

Until WeChat 5's public service account was fully upgraded, Nike's digital marketing team finally found inspiration.

< /p >

In recent years, P has become popular among white-collar workers in China's first tier cities.

All kinds of running organizations are also emerging one after another. Not only the major sports brands have established running clubs, but also some traditional enterprises.

< /p >

< p > but in addition to these organizations with an enterprise background, Nike hopes that more ordinary people can also participate in it. WeChat's group function is undoubtedly a good opportunity. In Nike's Nike+ Run Club account, users can find their surrounding running organizations according to their location and find more like-minded people to run together.

< /p >

< p > except for running public accounts, Nike is still planning the basketball public service account.

< /p >

< p > for most people, running is still a relatively independent sport, and it does not require many people to complete it together.

But basketball is different.

In most cases, this is a multiplayer activity.

For many fans, organizing small partners to play a game is a headache, because it is very difficult to get the right number.

Nike's digital marketing team is discussing the use of WeChat's group functions to help users solve this problem.

< /p >

< p > attract more user participation through social interaction, and then form user stickiness through data, and then interact with data and social interaction, so that users can complete the precipitation on the Nike+ platform. This is the essence of Nike O2O.

< /p >

The real potential of < p > strong > Nike+ platform is < /strong > /p >

< p > today, there are at least 20 or more years of first-line sports brands at home and abroad.

But in the past few decades, no sports brand has ever really understood its consumers. Even though many companies entrust third party organizations to conduct various types of user surveys every year, the amount and information they can collect are very limited.

< /p >

Less than P, a pair of running shoes has nothing to do with the Brand Company after they are sold. No one knows how users use these products after they buy them, whether they are for everyday wear or are they really used to run everyday.

Even though it is possible to deduce whether a consumer has the habit of exercise through repeated purchase frequency, but what is his exercise habit, the brand still does not know.

< /p >

< p > but for Nike, through continuous efforts on Internet products, it is truly understanding user's exercise habits, including user's movement frequency, movement time, location information and so on.

These data are of great value.

< /p >

< p > first, it can achieve more accurate advertising in the future. Users with large volume of sports must be the core sports crowd, and the demand for sporting goods is also more vigorous.

In fact, the product of Nike+Running now exists in disguised form.

Users can mark their shoes after each run. When a pair of running shoes has run 300~500 kilometers, the functionality will be greatly reduced, that is, when it comes to buying new shoes.

< /p >

< p > secondly, from the user's movement of geographical information, we can find which areas of the movement of the crowd is relatively concentrated, so that in the future, Nike can open this information to their agents, optimize the location of the agents' stores, and guide them to organize regular promotional activities in the area of the sports crowd.

< /p >

< p > again, the user's motion data can help < a href= "http://www.91se91.com/" target= "_blank" > designer < /a > and product managers design products that are more responsive to consumer needs.

The product director of Nike running shoes, when interviewed by commercial value, said that they learned from Nike+ that a large number of users were running at night, so they would add more reflective materials on the product.

Imagine that in the future, with Nike's further understanding of user's height and weight, and with the location information of user movement, Nike will be able to allocate its capacity more effectively and lay products in stores in different regions.

In the future, the embarrassment of seeing a product in a shop but not suitable for its own size will be gone forever.

< /p >

From a more macro perspective, P can help Nike predict the trend of the market even when the user scale of Nike+ increases further.

At present, the Nike+ community has registered 18 million users globally. Nike can actually understand changes in user movement through a certain mathematical model.

For example, when the total amount of user movement decreases, we should appropriately control the production capacity and invest more resources in marketing.

< /p >

These are not all unreachable fantasies. Some of them are indeed happening or will soon be realized, but for Nike, at the moment, P is still in the stage of being in a tight corner and has no need to publicize his methodology with his opponents.

< /p >

From the perspective of the Internet, what Nike is doing at the moment is actually building a bottom movement: a href= "http://www.91se91.com/news/index_s.asp" > ecosystem < /a >, helping more consumers develop the habit of exercising, making sports become an indispensable part of people's life. P

Such a move is not only beneficial to Nike itself. In the long run, the whole industry can enjoy the benefits brought by Nike's Internet strategy.

< /p >