Abstract

The case illustrates the strategic planning and initiatives of the ASICS company- A Tokyo based company that offers the footwear’s in the market and initiallytargeted the US market and its home markets. From its initiation, the companyremain focused on offering the unique value and differentiated factors in order to develop the strong market value propositionand thus the competitiveadvantage.The Sportswearandfootwear market is mainly held by Nike and ADIDAS as first and second leadersrespectively, the other players including ASICS compete to achieve the third position in the market under the footwear market. Perhaps, due to strong competitionanddriving force of big giants it is very critical for the small or mod-tier companies to operate and achieve the third position in the market.

However, regardless of the strong competition, ASICS managed to attain the competitiveposition against Nike and ADDIDAS by designing the first ever Gel shoes that attracted the great eyeball and also helped the company in achieving its sales target for the period.Though the company has remain successful in competing with the big giant players of theUS market, it still faces the issues of maintaining a strong competitive position along withstrongbrand recognitionandbrandawareness.

In order to dealwith these issues, the management is planning to develop the global marketingstrategyand incorporation of the digital informatics in the business so to cater the customer from both ends. In addition, ASICS is alsoplanning to leverage its acquired application of runnerkeeper to create the value chain in the market. Though these factors seems to offer the competitive edge to the company, however theright implementation is the key issues that the management has to resolve.

ASICS: Chasing a 2020 Vision Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Introduction

ASICS a sport wear companyinitiallystarted its business in 1949, offering the sport wear shoes to Japanese’smarket.Over the period of time with high quality and affordable pricing, the brand become popular and successful in the market. However due to inflated economic productivity and increasecompetition, the companystrategicallymoved outside of the domain of japan offering the same sports wears to the market with theprimefocus on US market. In 1988, the company launched its first Joggers with Gel technology to protect the athlete’s foot. The product becamesuccessfuland generatedgreat sales and brand awareness in the market.

Over the period of time, the companycontinued to offer the latest technology incorporated shoes to the market through indirect and retail channels. It also sponsored the marathon race events which allowed it togenerategreatsales and strong brand recognition in the US market. Since from the initiation, the company designed sportswear for the local schools in japan, it hindered its brand image of developing a more rigorous fun a serioussport warebrand, thus developed the strategy of sponsoring the leaguesand sports events in order to create the strong association with the brand.

In 2002, the company launched itself as the lifestyle brand in Europe and catered the demand for the casual footwear in the market.The particular move offered great market penetration to the company along with the development of strong value and brand equity in the Europeanmarket.

Though the company has managed to remain successful in maintaining strong value proposition in the market, it still struggles toymaintain the top Three position in the footwearand sport wares in US and in Europe where the majorhold is taken by Nike and Adidas.So in order to penetratethe US markets and developanaggressive growth strategy for the next Five years, the company developed five parameters to focus on in order to achieve the goal.These parameters are (1) Direct sales to customer (2) Expand the customer base by incorporating more variety and product line under the company ‘portfolio (3) Communicate a consistent brand by developing a uniform brand message (4) career differentiated Innovation thus developing the value proposition and competitive advantage and lastly develop the performanceexcellence along with strong team and people.

Though these are the some main factor ASICS is focused to achieve the organizationalgoal of 2020, however the additionalissue of incorporating digital meansandinformatics is also anissue. Since the market is moving towards digitalization, the company has acquired the runnerkeeper to offer theleveraged service to the customerandacquire the new markers along with the high conversion of the customerstowards the ecommerce website of the company........

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