Puma strategy till 2015 in puma’s women’s footwear mark

PUMA is a large German-based multinational company. It produces high-end athletic shoes and other sportswear. PUMA has a core competency over football shoes. Moreover, it also has the advantage of being sponsored by international football stars such as Pele, Eusebio, Johan Cruijff, Enzo Francescoli, Diego Maradona, Lothar Matthaus, Kenny Dalglish, Didier Deschamps and Gianluigi Buffon. The product line of PUMA consists of shoes as well as sports clothing that is designed by famous designers such as Lamine Kouyate, Amy Garbers, and others.

PUMA is famous for different products in different countries like it is more famous for its suede basketball shoe in the United States that it launched in 1968 but in Australia it is more famous for its apparel and footwear. In America, PUMA owns 25 percent of the branded sports products. This project is about the research demographic information and attractiveness of expansion segments for the Women’s Sports lifestyle segment and the ways in which PUMA can develop an effective way to expand into these segments and determine its current position in the global market through quantitative means.

In this era, the consumers’ place more significance on value and the companies like PUMA that succeed in this are more profitable than others. All customers want to make the most from the value that they are willing to pay in order to buy something. Therefore, they want easy access, high quality and full satifaction with minimum or atleast at a reasonable price. However, PUMA is well known international brand and has a great market.

People especially those who are brand loyal to the brand are always willing to pay whatever price PUMA charges its customers as they know the quality and satisfaction they would have after using the products manufactured by PUMA. Moreover, the growing trend for the demand of women’s sports wear has further enchanced the finnacaial position of PUMA. Lately, sports was mainly an actiivty the men used to get engaged in but now more and more women are taking interest and are getting involved in sports activities.

Therefore, this has turned out to pe a profitable market segment for PUMA. The consumers always require innovation. People usually get bored with the same thing for long. Therefore, the product should always be kept up-to-date in order to fulfill the growing demands of the existing and the prospective customers especially when we are targeting the segment of women. Not doing so could do no good but would harm the firm as they would loose customers due to the existing competitors.

PUMA, howevr is a reputable brand that also has a strong financial postion and so it can easily afford to have their own research and develpoment department through which the company can disccover the market trends that might follow in the fuure, the needs and the reqiuremnts of the women customers, the types of products they like and what they would prefer to purchase in future. The women sports goods industry is still growning and there are many more chances that more women would enter into this field.

Therefore, this would further increase the demand for the sports goods and this is an opportunity for PUMA to expand its operations in the market segment defined for the women. PUMA can also develop products for the children or the teenage females and their demand can be increased by promoting the sports for the teenage girls and provide opportunities for the girls to participate. Furthermore, PUMA can give counselling services to the girls who are interested in sports and training programs must be introduced.

This would definitely make the demand more effective that would then increase profts for the company. Other than that, supply chain management is also very important. The inventory system has to be managed very well and a track should be kept on the level of inventory available in the stores to avoid any delay in delivery. In this way they can also reduce their distribution as well as inventory costs. This would reduce the cost and thus will increase profits and so they can also reduce the price of the product available to the customer.

The accuracy of inventory can be increased by the use of wireless technology that can also reduce fraud for which radio frequency identification can also be used to keep track of the inventory. This would tell PUMA about the products present on shelves of the stores, goods available in the warehouse and about the suppliers. Radio frequency identification technology uses radio waves for the transfer of information from a reader device and an item.

PUMA can increase its profits by extensive use of electronic commerce or e-commerce that is basically about doing the business using the Internet and the World Wide Web. Other terms for e-commerce are e-business and e-tailing. Online catalogs should be made available to the customers on the websites from the where the customers can easily see the list of products i. e the catalog available alongwith other details such as price. They should even have the faciltiy to compare prices of their desired products on the Internet and can place the order easily from home.

This way of doing business is advantageous for PUMA in one of the ways that the customers can place their order at any time of the day and at any place using Internet on their computer as there is no restriction on time to place the order. Nowadays, women have emerged as a major part of the society and more of the rich women consumers are also engaged in their own activities so they don’t have ample time to visit a store to place an order so they might prefer to place online orders and so they will prefer those companies that provide online services to the customers.

Another way of increasing sales is the trend of e-mails and faxes. Some people themselves subscribe to online newsletters from the website of PUMA but the company can also mail the current and the prosective companies in order to advertise about the existing and the upcoming products for women’s sports wear without any subscription or any fee charge. This is also one of the easiest and cheapest sources of advertising. PUMA can also place advertisments on the websites that are commonly viewed by consumers.

These can be the websites that are related to sports actvities. Moreover, before advertising PUMA must take care of some of the things like dothe prospective conumers of that particular product visit that website? And how often do they visit, etc. PUMA is somewhat fulfilling the technology needs of the company but still there is a large room for improvement. Many more technologies can be introduced to improve the efficiency of the organization.

This not only increases the satisfaction of the customers but it also attracts new customers and retains the existing ones. It can also find new markets for their existing and upcoming products. Other than that, feedback is also very important. Customers mostly have complaints about something or the other. For this, Internet and wireless technologies very important as it is easy for both the customers and the retailers to have access and so they can easily forward their complaints, suggestions and get feedback from the organization.

Therefore, PUMA should also take extensive feedback of the women customers so that it may know what they are good at and what they are lacking in. Even new softwares’ are available these days that reduce a lot of workload for the employees hired by PUMA and this is beneficial for the company as they can reduce costs by reducing the number of individuals employed but this is not good for the country’s population. PUMA should further adopt marketing strategies that would help the company in generating profits by expanding market segments.

The strategies can only be made effective if PUMA plans proper marketing campaigns. However, as PUMA is a well known brand, it does not need to introduce itself into the market and this serves as an advantage to the company. PUMA must also increase the range of sport goods items so that more market segments could be developed as there is a lot of high competition already and PUMA has to compete with the other brands. Competitors of PUMA are Nike, Adidas, Prada Sports and Diesel. It can acquire any sports