Problem statement
What Problems Are Specifically Faced By Under Armour While Marketing Their Products?
What Steps Are Taken By The Managers To Reduce The Specific Problems?
What Are The Alternative Strategies Used By The Rival Companies Of Under Armour?
This research is based on the American company Under Armour, which excels in manufacturing footwear, casual apparel and sportswear. The company is headquartered in the Baltimore region and other offices are spread in Amsterdam, Jakarta, London, Mexico city and others. The company was founded in the year 1996 by former football captain of Mryland football team, Kevin Plank (Baughman 2018, pp. 133- 134). The business was initially functioning from the basement of the owner’s grandmother in Washington. The business started from a grass- root level to give a tough competition n the later days. After Plank was able to set up his business successfully, his brand started getting tough competition from the existing companies such as Reebok, Nike and Adidas. The innovation of products in the form of using moisture- wicking synthetic fabric gave the brand a competitive advantage in the market. The products started getting popular among the common people and the sports person when the media started advertising about the same. The company started making new products rapidly such as ColdGear, TurfGear and others, which gave the company a major break in 1999 (Bohnsack et al. 2016, p. 154). This research proposal will look into the current market of the company and the problems that it is facing in the recent days.
It is evident from the background study and the market research of the company that this brand is responsible for doing business in the product category of sportswear, footwear, accessories and apparels. This sheds light on the fact that the business is conducted only on the specific group of customers who are sportsperson or related to sports industry. The problem is faced by the company, as they do not target the common people in general. This has limited their target population to only a certain section of the society. Moreover, there is tough competition in the market from the existing brands of Nike, Adidas and Reebok. The customers have a tendency to trust on the older brands rather than a new brand. The issue has become more prominent because the company conducts their business on an international level and the lack in their operation is hampering their sale in the global market too. The problem will take a worse shape if it is not treated in the initial stage and the rival companies will take advantage of the situation. Moreover, the increase in the cost of product development and the marketing and advertising costs have taken a toll on the financial management of the company (Grady 2016, p.1). It has been marked as an underperforming brand and the reasons are many. The company has a restricted patent protection ability, which is focused under the problem area of the company. Recent downturn in the global economy and maintain a positive brand image in this environment has come as a major challenge for Under Armour. This research proposal will further highlight the problems faced by the company Under Armour to conduct a research on the same.
Rationale of the research
The research that will be carried out on the American Company, Under Armour will be able to find out probable solution to the problems that were highlighted in the previous section of the proposal. The recent downturn in the economy all over the world has taken a toll on the business of Under Armour and this research will be helpful in finding out strategies that might save the future of the company. The research will be able to look out for alternative strategies used by the rival companies in the market in order to be at par with the industry standards. The rationale of the research was based on finding out the problems to carry out a research on the same and look for probable solutions of the problems. It will help the company to overcome the issues to certain extent and emerge as a reputed brand in the marketing. The tough competition from the rival companies of Nike, Adidas and Reebok will be evaluated to look for innovation in the product and services of Under Armour (Grady 2017, p. 3). This proposal will be effective in structuring the research questions so that the study can be carried out in a systematic manner to draw a probable solution for the rising problems.
The management decision statement or the MDS referred to the opinion of the management regarding the problems pertinent to the company. Past information and forecasts, resources and constraints, objectives, customer behavior, legal environment, economic environment and marketing and technological skills are considered important with respect to the decision statement of management (Guyan and Paunil 2017, p.44). In the case of Under Armour, the management decision statement has thrown light on the company reports and their rate of success in the past years. It was found out from the opinion of the managers that the company was following a positive graph from the initial days of its business. However, the problem started arising when there was a economic downturn all over the world. Under Armour, fell prey to this global issue and their business started falling low. Additionally the company also had lack of proprietary product rights and intellectual property rights, which tended to be major problem in their business. The information gathered from the managers bore proof to the fact that the company was finding it difficult to cope up with the financial crisis as well as maintain a positive brand image in the market. The data collected from the existing documents highlighted that the rival company Nike had a market share of 13.13%, whereas Under Armour had 1.87% (Heroux 2017, pp. 124- 128). This huge difference in market share was considered as one of the problems in the research area.
Management decision statement (MDS)
This research is aimed at the fulfillment of different objectives of the research to solve the problems faced by the company Under Armour. Every business has the objective to make profit and gain most of the market share and Under Armour was no exception. However, the business had started well under Kevin Plank but later fell to a major loss. Their lack of property rights added more to the issue and it required an immediate solution to cope up with the loss. The company needed to stand erect in the competitive market and therefore, a research will be conducted to focus on the attainment of the specific objectives. Given below are the objectives, which will be fulfilled at the end of the research.
- Objective 1: to find out the specific problems which made operation difficult for Under Armour
- Objective 2: to look out for alternative solution to the persisting problems in the company
- Objective 3: to find a probable conclusion for helping Under Armour to regain their market share
The null and alternate hypothesis for the specific research is given below:
H0: The marketing research of the company is not helpful for solving their problems in gaining market share
H1: The marketing research of the company is helpful for solving their problems in gaining market share
The research will be outlined by maintaining a proper format of five chapters. Chapter 1 will include introduction. In the introduction part, the research will focus on the background of the company and the topic of the research. In the case of Under Armour, the problem will be based on the underperformance of the brand. The issue of the brand also revolved on the management of the cost of product development, and at the same time coping up with the increasing cost of marketing the products. This became the problem statement for the research. It will be followed by the rationale of the research. This section will focus on the importance of carrying out the research and the effectiveness of doing the same. The following section will highlight the aims and objectives of the research. It will outline the basic concept behind carrying out the research and the factors that will be looked forward at the end. There will be three research questions based on which the information will be collected. The aim of the researcher will be to compare and contrast the collected information with the research question to find a probable solution for the same. The research question will be followed by determining the hypothesis for the research. The hypothesis will involve a null and an alternate hypothesis, which will be symbolized as H0 and H1 respectively.
Business research objective (BRO)
The second chapter will consist of the literature review. In this section, the researcher will gather information from the existing literature, documents, company reports, books and journal articles. In the case of Under Armour, the company reports will focus on the growth of the company and the marketing strategies used by them. The literature review will look for the alternative strategies used by other companies previously during their crisis period. It will consider similar kinds of problems faced by Under Armour or other companies regarding their product development or coping up with the costs of marketing.
The third chapter of the report will consist of the research methodology. In this chapter, the methods adopted for conducting the research work will be outlined. There are different types of research methodology such as primary and secondary. Primary sources refer to the collection of first hand data and the secondary sources refer to the collection of existing information. In this part it will be justified the use of certain kind of research methodology. This chapter will also include research philosophy, research design, research strategy and research approach and justification will be provided for using a specific category in the particular research.
The fourth chapter will involve the process of data collection and analysis. In this chapter, the research will highlight if qualitative or quantitative data analysis was done in the course of the specific research. The justification of using the particular process of data collection and analysis will be explained in detail.
Finally, the fifth chapter will conclude the findings of the research by drawing a suitable conclusion and providing recommendation for the betterment of the company. It will give a complete structure to the report that was focused on the problems faced by the American company Under Armour. Furthermore, the research will outline the limitations of the research and ethical considerations that were maintained throughout the journey of the researcher.
For the specific research on Under Armour, the suitable research design will be descriptive. There are three types of research design such as descriptive, explanatory and exploratory, but descriptive will be best suited in the specific research. The other two research designs cannot be considered relevant to the problems that were faced by Under Armour. Exploratory research design helps in analyzing the initial stages of the study (Holt 2016, pp. 40-50). This cannot be used in this research, as the initial stages did not focus on the specific problem of the company. The problems emerged in the later part of the business when there was economic downturn. On the other hand, explanatory research design is effective in those cases where a relationship is established between two research variables. It was not applicable in this research because the study did not focus on two variables, rather there were different issues involved in the research. Therefore, descriptive research design was found suitable in the specific study related to the problems faced by the American company Under Armour. The diagram given below reflects the idea behind using descriptive research design for this specific study.
Research hypothesis
Fig: Descriptive research design
Source: (James and Whitney 2018, pp. 164- 193)
For this particular research on the underperformance of Under Armour, descriptive research design will be suitable. This is because the specific research design will be effective in presenting an in- depth analysis of the relevant theories and concepts of the research topic. In order to understand the marketing issues and problems related to the increasing cost of product development, a detailed analysis was necessary. That is the reason behind choosing descriptive research design for this particular research. Descriptive research design will help in conducting a detailed analysis of the marketing issues and financial problems faced by the company due to economic downturn (Jensen et al. 2016, pp. 281- 298).
Among different research philosophy, positivism research philosophy will be used in this specific research because it will help in observing the topic from a logical and critical perspective. This research philosophy will be suitable in this topic because the interpretation will be derived from the sensory experience. It will be an objective kind of research, which will be based on facts. Other research philosophies will not be used because those are related to human perception and it might result in the variability of the research outcome (Johnson Dretsch and Kirmani 2014, p. 35).
The research on Under Armour will use deductive approach because it will be based on the previous theories and concepts. There will not be any innovation or no new theories will be established in this research. Other research approach will not be used in this case because inductive approach is used when the research is intended to focus on the establishment of new theories. However, in this research no new concept will be build up by the researcher.
Apart from choosing a specific research design, there will be a particular source for data collection. It can be collected from primary and secondary sources. For this particular research, major data collection will be done from the secondary sources. It will consider the information collected from the existing company reports and data of other companies. To analyze the collected data, thematic analysis will be done in order to arrange the information on different themes. The validity of the collected data will be checked and measured.
Conclusion
It can be concluded from the proposal that the research will be able to find out a probable solution for the problems persisting in Under Armour. This proposal has outlined different methods and designs that will be considered for conducting this research and a justification for using the same has been provided. The suitable method for collecting and analyzing data for the research was effective in understanding the manner in which the research will be completed. Moreover, the research will be carried out in an ethical manner and the limitations of the research will be carefully dealt.
References
Baughman, K.C., 2018. Can A Celebrity Make A Retail Company? The Impact of Video Endorsements on Nike and Under Armour’s Profits and Stock Performances (2010-2017).
Bohnsack, D., Jostol, G., Maher, R., Sundar, A., Pokrywczynski, J. and Berg, K., 2016, January. TRACKING SPORTS & EVENT MARKETING ANALYTICS FOR MARKETING EFFECTS: RELEVANT RESEARCH QUESTIONS THE INDUSTRY KNOWS AND NEEDS. In American Academy of Advertising. Conference. Proceedings (Online) (p. 154). American Academy of Advertising.
Grady, J., 2016. Predicting the Future for Rio 2016: Legal Issues in Sponsorship, Ambush Marketing, and Social Media. ESLJ, 14, p.1.
Grady, J., 2017. Analyzing Rule 40’s Restrictions on Using Athletes in Olympic Sponsorship at Rio 2016. The Entertainment and Sports Law Journal, 15(1).
Guyan, A. and Paunil, A., Under Armour Inc, 2017. Shoe component. U.S. Patent Application 29/557,044.
Heroux, L., 2017. Sports Outfitters’ Marketing Strategies: A Comparative Exploratory Study in the US and Canada.
Holt, D., 2016. Branding in the age of social media. Harvard business law review, 94(3), pp.40-50.
James, C.R. and Whitney, K., 2018. Under Armour: repositioning for the global stage. The CASE Journal, 14(2), pp.164-193.
Jensen, J.A., Wakefield, L., Cobbs, J.B. and Turner, B.A., 2016. Forecasting sponsorship costs: marketing intelligence in the athletic apparel industry. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 34(2), pp.281-298.
Johnson Dretsch, H. and Kirmani, A., 2014. Why Are Some Brand Co-Creation Activities More Effective Than Others?: the Effects of Brand Knowledge Potential and Self-Brand Connection on Brand Engagement Intentions. ACR North American Advances.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
