1. Explain how Bronwen can begin to identify a main target market group for NB Football’s clear…

1. Explain how Bronwen can begin to identify a main target market group for NB Football’s clear market.
2. explain how NB should use both traditional and non traditional retailers to help sell this new product line.

3. explain how NB can employ specific social media platforms to support this sales effort.

4. explain whether NB should continue to pursue endorsements and sponsorship to support this sales effort.

Case Study 18-1 The Challenges of Entering a New Market Although only 29 years old, Bronwen Morrison New Balance (NB), the privately held footwear and is an industry veteran. When she first came out apparel manufacturing company headquartered in of her undergraduate sport management degree Brighton, Massachusetts, has deliberately inched program, she took a job with Liberty Sports Group its way up in sales and growth in the past decades. where she had interned while in college, and man NB benefited from the running boom of the 1970s, aged the launch of the “Beckster,” a skateboard- with sales growing from $200,000 annually to $80 million, and has found a niche with middle-aged ing shoe targeted toward the market’s smaller and older consumers who were more concerned with grassroots users where smaller niche companies performance than fashion. Many consumers rate the tend to dominate. The shoe was a modest success , company’s products as particularly high in comfort. so much so that Morrison, when spotted wearing Following a few failed attempts at taking on a throwback 1976 San Diego Padres jersey at the Nike and becoming a flashy and “cool” brand to sporting Goods Super Show in Atlanta, was asked attract a bigger share of the market, former NB to head the creation of a line of throwback-inspired chair and CEO Jim Davis said a lesson was learned: urban fashion clothes for women by Trey Luce, “If we try to be like everyone else, if we try to stress creator and owner of Thugstaz. The line, dubbed fashion over quality or marketing over performance, “Hugstaz,” was also a solid market success and we won’t be successful” (Reidy, 2005, p. E4). This put the line in positive competition with similar sustainable approach to growth has allowed NB to products by other urban fashion companies. retain its core market, and NB’s annual sales are Bronwen then went on to work at the apparel approaching $4 billion. NB has made great strides retail chain Lululemon Athletica (which describes into the baseball cleats market over the past several its products as “yoga-inspired athletic apparel years in part through endorsement deals with MLB helping the company create a product line targeted stars and sponsorship agreements with organiza- toward men. tions like the Boston Red Sox. Her next professional challenge brought het However, another recent effort to try and play back to the footwear market-specifically, to NB. the hip game fell flat when NB tried to break into the to increase sales for the company’s “Minimus soccer market with one of its subsidiary brands, War- line of minimal running shoes. While that trend rior, which is known much more as a lacrosse and has flattened out, NB has asked Bronwen to turn hockey brand. With cleated products curiously called her efforts to New Balance Football, the rebooted “Murder Hole” and “Glory Hole,” the launch failed. attempt by NB to step into the soccer market One established connection to the internationa soccer market is NB’s annual uniform and apparel deal at a cost of $35 million per year with English Premier League club Liverpool F.C. That EPL club is owned by John Henry, who is also the principal owner of the Red Sox. But unlike going after the baseball market, which means competing more directly with the like-sized Under Armour, chasing the soccer shoe market means trying to match the resources of adidas (which spends more than $1.6 billion alone in a uniform and apparel deal with Real Madrid) and Nike (which spends more than $1.3 billion alone in a uniform and apparel a deal with Barcelona) (Brennan, 2016). Since NB can’t outspend adidas and Nike, Bronwen has to take a different approach.
5. identify and explain any concerns about manufacturing conduct that NB can promote as a part of this sales effort.