Chapter seven: Business Marketing

What is business marketing?
Business Marketing is the marketing of goods and services to individuals and organizations for purposes other than personal consumption. Nike buys products like shoe boxes and selves not to sell to customers but to display their products and to put them in them.

There are four categories of business customers: producers, re-sellers,  governments and institution. Nike deals with the category of reselling and connects with franchising. Nike sells their products like sneakers. sports gear and clothing to companies like Modell's, Footlocker, Foot Action, Finish Line, Hyper Active  Jimmy Jazz, Champs Sports, and other retailers that sell sneakers or sports clothing. Even though Nike has their owe stores, they do this to spread their products through out the market more and stay on top of the game. Here are some pictures of different retailers that sell Nike products: (the last one is Modell's)

Chapter eight: Segmenting and Targeting Markets

The market people or organizations with needs or wants and the ability and willingness to buy. Since Nike  has operations in over 160 countries, its market is huge and since they sell not only sneakers but also clothing and sports gear they have different market segments. A market segment is a subgroup of people or organizations sharing one or more characteristics that cause them to have similar product needs. Dividing these groups into meaningful, relatively similar and identifiable segments is called market segmentation. An example of this is when you go to the Niketown stores and you see the different sections of products. The Niketown in 57th street has 5 floors. Each floor sells a different product for each market segment they have. The segments are divided by sports consumers like and sneakers that go with each type of sport or just sneakers to wear regularly. Also by genders and ages. In the 5th floor, they sell everything basketball from sneakers to jerseys to shorts and basketball accessories. The 4th floor sells mostly football clothing, gear and NFL jerseys and also sell soccer clothing and shoes. The 3rd and 2nd floors i forget which one sells which , but they sell either men's or women's track/running shoes and apparel. The first floor has the main products for each sports season and new product releases.
 

Nike also has there website in segments by first having each sport up and when you click on the sport, it shows if you want to buy products for men, women or kids. On the picture below if you look to the left you would see one of the ways Nike sets up its groups: