Under Armor Willful Digital Moves – Strategic Analysis Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Under Armor Willful Digital Moves – Strategic Analysis Case Study Analysis

Health Conscious Customers:As consumers continue to prioritize their health and actively search for healthy alternatives to prevent lifestyle-related illness, the health-conscious customer segment will also be targeted. In addition, in order to perform sports activities to remain healthy and fit, the demand for sports apparel by these customers appears to be significant which is evident by the significant growth in gym niche memberships.

Marketing Strategies Strengths and Weaknesses:

The strengths and weaknesses of starring real people in advertisements are as follows:

1. The genuine and emotional connection will be developed with the consumers
2. The social reputation for the organization will be improved as a result of reflecting the diversity and real people in the advertisements as women of different sizes and different colors will be used.
3. The real people will further recommend the organization’s products to their family and friends thus, achieving the marketing strategy of word of mouth, increasing customer base as 92% of the consumers relies on word of mouth for purchasing a product.
4. The strategy will save millions of dollars thus, allowing the organization to achieve its objective of making the brand value to $10 billion by the year 2020. Moreover, the saved funds will be invested in profitable opportunities, thus, providing a competitive advantage to the company.
5. The people might perceive that the organization is paying real people to give positive reviews about the organization’s products.
6. Starring celebrities have huge growth prospects as employing the specified advertisement strategy will increase the organizations’ share price by 0.25% and revenue by $10 million US dollars.

Problems Found in Situational Analysis:

Three problems have found through internal and external analysis of Under Armour.

• The mission and vision of the company are not as clear as it can be. There are no parameters set to achieve the goals and objectives of the company which creates issues in the current strategy and future planning of the company. The evidence of this lack of direction has been derived from the company’s financial data which shows a rapid decrease in the profits while an increase in the debt of the company. Along with that, a decline in profits is also a cause of the fluctuating prices of materials in the economy to which the company was unable to hedge.
• Under Armour is not going to take the first-mover advantage in the market. Under Armour adopts the innovative strategy when the other players in the market have already captured the maximum market share. This slow reaction towards emerging trends generates low brand awareness ultimately low profitability.
• The manufacturing, distribution and overall sourcing of the company had taken serious flaws in it. The competitors of the company sourced their fabrics from a number of specialist companies globally. Furthermore, the stores and manufacturing plants of the company are widespread within 16 countries through Asia, America, and the Middle East which leads to higher lead times and unpredictable wait times on certain items.

Strategic Alternates:

Three strategic alternatives are recommended to the company in order to solve the above-mentioned problems. These three strategic alternates are

• The company should change its mission statement in order to provide a clear direction about the goals and objectives of the company. A clear direction might align and head all the aspects of the business. In addition to this, the company should focus on the differentiation strategy in order to get a competitive advantage over competitors. This strategy will help to reduce the marketing, manufacturing, and distribution and inventory costs for the company.
• In order to get a competitive advantage, the company should gain a larger segment of the market by not only creating a sync collection but a one which is also a limited edition. This limited edition must be released in every quarter of the year. Also, the production of these stocks must be limited one which will reduce the inventory turnover ultimately provide an increase in gross profits of the company.
• Under Armour’s current business model must be modified according to the international customers as the company is going to put their feet in international markets. For this purpose, the company needs to hire the specialist innovation team which ensures and meets all needs, wants and goals of the current market practices of the company. As knows that it will be the long term strategy for the company, so, it might affect the short term profits and gross margins of the company but will provide good financial results in the future.

Conclusion:

Under Armor Inc. is a USA based company operating in the manufacturing of footwear was concerned regarding its customer segments and marketing strategies. The organization wanted to achieve a value of 10 million US dollars by the year 2020 therefore, it was advised to the business to target a wider population that includes male and female professional athletes, youth, kids and health-conscious customers instead of focusing only on female segments and to run the net marketing campaign starring real people on multi-channel platforms in order to target the maximum number of customers................................

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