Compare and Contrast the Marketing Strategies of Li Ning

English Language Centre Cover Sheet | Draft| X| Course Work Submission| Put an X in the box to show whether this is a draft or a credit-bearing coursework assignment Full Name (in pinyin)| | Yinqin Wang| English Name (optional)| | | ID Number| 1101133| Class (e. g. Y2_EEE_A1)| Y2_BAD_A2| Programme| Business Administration| Module Code| EAP105|Assignment Title| Compare and contrast the marketing strategies of Li Ning domestically and internationally| Submission Deadline| 22 October 2012 before 20:00| EAP Tutor’s Name| Jacqueline Banki| Final Word Count| 1057| I certify that: * I have read and understood the University’s definitions of COLLUSION and PLAGIARISM (available on p. 31 of the current Academic Student Handbook of Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University and in the 2011 ELC Student Handbook Appendix 2, 4, and 5).With reference to these definitions, I certify that: * I have not colluded with any other student in the preparation and production of this work; * thi s document has been written solely by me and in my own words except where I have clearly indicated and acknowledged that I have quoted or used figures from published or unpublished sources (including the web); * where appropriate, I have provided an honest statement of the contributions made to my work by other people including technical and other support staff.I understand that unauthorised collusion and the incorporation of material from other works without acknowledgement (plagiarism) are serious disciplinary offences. By uploading my assignment onto ICE, I formally declare that all the above statements are true. Scoring – For Teachers Use (teachers may change descriptor labels below as needed)| Marker| Initials| C| O| G| V| R| Final Mark| First – red pen| | | | | | | | Second – green pen| | | | | | | | Third (if needed)| | | | | | | | For Academic Office Use| Other Penalties|Date Received| Days Late| Late Penalty| Marker Initials| Format (Y/N)| Plagiarism Co de| Collusion Code| | | | 1. | | | | | | | 2. | | | | Compare and contrast the marketing strategies of Li Ning domestically and internationally With Chinese economy developing rapidly recent years and the huge success of 2008 Beijing Olympics, Chinese sportswear market has emerged a blooming scene. Not only the mighty foreign brands such as Nike and Adidas win the favor of Chinese people, which took 10. 5% and 7. % of mainland sportswear transactions respectively in 2011, the domestic brands such as Li Ning and Anta also occupy large market share (China Daily, 2012). Li Ning, the Chinese domestic sportswear brand which bears the name of renowned Chinese gymnastic athlete Li Ning, acts a leading role in Chinese sportswear market. Only secondly to Adidas, Li Ning possesses 7. 2% market share and keeps expanding (China Daily, 2012). Not satisfied with its immense domestic achievement, Li Ning strives for more enormous stage and switches its target to international market since 2011.Not ably, on the one hand, the domestic marketing strategies of Li Ning, such as opening and streamlining numerous retail stores, are somehow quite different from the international strategies like using e-commerce approach. On the other hand, the strategies domestically and internationally also share several similarities like attaching importance to branding. The emphasis of this essay is to compare and contrasts the domestic and international marketing strategies of Li Ning. Although to some extent few of these strategies are alike, Li Ning has largely followed diverse approaches domestically and internationally.To begin with, there are some similarities between the market strategies of Li Ning domestically and internationally, such as investing more in branding to cultivate its long-term competitiveness. Specifically, both domestic and international strategies take steps to sponsor famed athletes or sports team to advertise the high quality and advanced functionality of its products, which aims to make people hold a favorable impression of Li Ning. For instance, in 2012 London Olympics, various overseas medal candidates like Spain’s basketball team were signed with Li Ning (Brandchannel, 2012).Also, Li Ning grasped Chinese top gold medal forecasts in multifarious sports events like ping pong and badminton, which includes Lin Dan and Wu Mingxia who enjoy the high popularity among Chinese people (Brandchannel, 2012). Especially, the athletes who are sponsored by Li Ning are inspired to publicize Li Ning not only by wearing its products. For example, immediately after Lin Dan won the gold though the spectacular final game, the logo of Li Ning at the jersey of Lin was tugged to display a gesture of appreciations, which makes the effect of advertising cracking (Brandchannel, 2012).Furthermore, domestic strategies are also similar to international strategies in targeting young generations. Domestically, Li Ning replaced old logo and slogan to make the brand mor e abut to the generation born after 1990s as well as establishes new â€Å"sixth-generation stores† which attracting young clients (China Daily, 2011). World widely, Li Ning also focuses on young people because they are unbiased to Chinese brands, accustomed to shopping online and generally spend so much time surfing the Internet, which opportunely corresponds to the e-commerce strategy of Li Ning (Ad Age, 2011).Although the domestic and international strategies share some similarities, they nevertheless employ fundamentally different approaches in a number of key areas, such as using different channels to sell products. In other words, the strategies domestically direct to sell inventories mainly in solid shops, whereas the international strategies prefer using e-commerce, event marketing and digital media. In detail, numerous retail shops spread all over China are owned by Li Ning.Also, confronted the cooling Chinese economy in recent times, in order to raise the efficiency of entity sales, the company adopts measures that streamlining the network of the retail stores and entering lower tiers cities to speed eliminating premium brands by merger and acquisition(China Daily, 2012). When it turns to worldwide, to shun retail channels, Li Ning established its appropriative e-commerce sites as the only passageway to its products and released a delicate teaser video heavily on its Facebook page and twitter account (Voight, 2012).Also, microsites and events are relied to induce online buzz (Voight, 2012). In addition, the domestic and international strategies are dissimilar in the slogan and the images they are intended to shape. Domestically, Li Ning created a new slogan â€Å"make the change† to indicate that greatness is not undying, only changes can be perpetual, which not only nettles the slogan of Nike â€Å"Live through your greatness†, but also remodels the impression of Chinese people on Li Ning as a more high-end brand (Brandchannel, 2012).Internationally, the slogan â€Å"straight out of new China† demonstrates that its products leverage its rich Chinese culture and are diverse from the cheap, rough made-in-China goods as old perception considered (Voight, 2012). Furthermore, with regards to new marketing segments need to be expanded, Li Ning focus on Children garment domestically while women market segment internationally. Cooperated with local children garment firm Paclantic to design more attractive children sports and leisure clothing, the clothes could be sold in the franchised stores and affiliated shops of Li Ning in China (Wang, 2012).Nevertheless, the market segment of women who do not need intramuscular figures and desire equal positions with men are attached importance to by the international strategies of Li Ning (Warc, 2011). In summary, this essay has made comparisons and contrasts between the marketing strategies of Li Ning domestically and internationally. The domestic strategies, like th e international ones, have strong sponsor awareness and also aim to attract younger generations.Despite that the international and domestic strategies have to some degree implemented similar strategies; essentially approaches are adopted in crucial areas, such as using different slogans, selling products by different channels and expanding different market segments. Although the e-commerce method ingeniously avoids complex retail channels internationally and the notion to achieve long-term profits domestically seem to be reasonable, Li Ning may ot achieve so many profits as they expected, because its vague brand positioning might cause the confusion and misconstrue of domestic people and its international consumers may despise Li Ning for its imitative logo and slogan which have some resemblance to Nike and Adidas. It is suggested that Li Ning should slow down its expansion and invest more to raise the quality and make some innovations instead of having large inventories discounted as a result of expanding too fast. Also, to have explicit brand positioning is crucial.Nonetheless, as Li Ning keeps adjusting corresponded to the changing situation and creating new products, it is too early to definitively judge whether Li Ning will have a promising future. References list Ad Age (2011). China's Li-Ning Takes on Nike, Adidas With U. S. E-Commerce Site. [online]  New York: Ad Age. Available from: http://adage. com/article/cmo-interviews/china-s-li-ning-takes-nike-u-s-e-commerce-site/231642/. (Accessed 12 October 2012) Brandchannel (2012). London 2012: Success as Li-Ning ‘Makes a Change' in Olympics Strategy. [online] New York: brandchannel. Available from: http://www. randchannel. com/home/post/2012/08/13/London-2012-Li-Ning-081312. aspx. (Accessed: 12 October 2012) China Daily (2011). Li Ning expects business to slow. [online] Beijing: China Daily. Available from: http://www. chinadaily. com. cn/bizchina/2011-01/18/content_11874065. htm. (Accessed: 12 Octo ber 2012) China Daily (2012). China's sportswear brands nurse Olympics hangover. [online] Beijing: China Daily. Available from: http://www. chinadaily. com. cn/business/londongames/2012-07/02/content_15542591. htm. (Accessed: 12 October 2012) Voight, J. (2012). Video Is Lifeblood of Li-Ning's ‘New China' Sneaker Launch. online] Charlotte: ClickZ. Available from: http://www. clickz. com/clickz/news/2166538/video-lifeblood-li-nings-china-snea ker-launch. (Accessed: 12 October 2012) Warc (2011). Li-Ning plans global push. [online] London: Warc. Available from: http://www. warc. com/Content/News/Li-Ning_plans_global_push. content? ID=e7907838-2cd7-4859-ae44-f1695abdbd52;q. ( Accessed: 12 October 2012) Wang, W. (2012). Li Ning rejoins race in children's wear market. [online] Beijing: China Daily. Available from: http://www. chinadaily. com. cn/business/2012-05/12/content_15276320. htm. (Accessed: 12 October 2012) Compare and Contrast the Marketing Strategies of Li Ning Compare and contrast the marketing strategies of Li Ning domestically and internationally With the development of Chinese economy, sports industry has become one of the new industries in china, which has large market size and high growth rate (Qinqin, n. d. ). In Chinese sports area, Li Ning brand, built by famous gymnast Li Ning (Enright, 2012), is the market leader and owns about 8000 hypostatic shops domestically (Zhang,2011). Similar to some international famous brands like Nike and Adidas, Li Ning intends to enhance influence by exploring international market (Sauer, 2012).For this reason, the essay will compare and contrast the marketing strategies of Li Ning domestically and internationally. A close look at the sources available, it seems that the topic could be analyzed from the internal aspect such as sales methods, promotion and the external aspect such as consumption concept and competition. The essay will compare and analyze Li Ning’s marketing strategies by the in ternal and external aspects’ factors. From the internal perspective, there are two main sales strategies should be considered as follows: sales methods and promotion.In regard to sales methods, Li Ning implements entity sales and e-commerce sales at home and abroad simultaneously (Anon, 2011a, Voight, 2012 and Zhang, 2011). Nevertheless, the focus of sales methods might be different considering the contrasting name reputation domestically and internationally. Li Ning, named after china’s gold-medaling gymnast, is very famous in china, especially after the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing (Enright, 2012). As typical local brand with high name reputation, Li Ning chooses entity sales as its main way of sale domestically and there are almost 8000 hypostatic shops in china (Zhang, 2011).Whereas the name Li Ning perhaps unfamiliar in the West. For instance, the marketing firm tested the brand with U. S. customers and the result shows that brand awareness was almost 0% (Enright , 2012). Rather than seeing it as a bad thing, Li Ning sees it as a launch point to â€Å"upgrade the brand image and win recognition from consumers† (Zhang, 2011). What is why â€Å"Li-Ning is planning to concentrate on the new online portal before opening more brick-and-mortar stores† in U. S. market (Anon, 2011a). In order to achieve more name reputation and higher sales, Li Ning fixes much attention n another sales strategy, promotion, as well. Both foreign and domestic, Li Ning has been paying much attention to Olympic Games and sports super stars (Anon, 2011b and Sauer, 2012). At home, since 1992 in Barcelona, China’s Olympic terms have chosen Li Ning as a fixture and the brand still counts on gold-medal terms such as Chinese ping pong, shooting gymnastics and badminton teams (Anon, 2011b). Overseas, Li Ning was the 30th Olympic Games sponsorship in 2012 (Sauer, 2012) and invited NBA All-Star teams players to speak for it (Anon, 2011b).Moreover, according to different national culture, Li Ning even used different slogans to appeal to the nationalist fervor. For instance, where the word â€Å"you† was used by Nike in America, Li Ning chose the slogan â€Å"we can† domestically and â€Å"the moment† for international audience (Anon, 2011b). On the other hand, in external aspect, Li Ning has taken a series of measures to deal with two social problems: target groups and fierce competition (Anon, 2011a, Ranasinghe, 2012 and Zhang, 2011). With the rapid development of internationalization, various views on Chinese goods have been published.In china, instead of praising highly local brand, Chinese customers are worried about the Chinese sports brand’s store quality is not equal to the brand's quantity (Zhang, 2011), preferring internationally famous brands like Nike and Adidas (Ranadinghe, 2012) and transforming the cost from sports to food and beverage (Ranasinghe, 2012). On abroad, although some older consumers usually think of China-made products as fakes or knockoffs, younger consumers do not see Chinese products as second-class or counterfeits (Enright, 2012).Regarding the situation, in recent years, Li Ning has been trying to make the brand more youthful and upmarket (Anon, 2011b). For the new strategy, Li Ning not only created a new logo and new slogans but also launched many new products with a better outlook and quality, which aimed to appeal to domestic and foreign younger generation (Zhang, 2011). Furthermore, Li Ning has managed to expand to different areas at home and internationally as well (Anon, 2011a, Anon 2011b and Wen, 2012).In view of China’s family planning policy, Li Ning has rejoined the battle of children’s garments by cooperated with another company in Tianjin (Wen, 2012). In consideration of the case that many foreign customers have great curiosity about eastern culture (Voight, 2012); Li Ning puts brand international feeling over oriental theme (Zhan g, 2012). For example, in March 2012, Li Ning promoted a pair of men’s basketball shoes with the Chinese dragon pattern which was a limited edition on Facebook, and then the tremendous crowds to Li Ning’s website led it to collapse (Voight, 2012).In addition, Women have become another one of the main target groups of Li Ning overseas (Anon, 2011a). Next, the second problem Li Ning is facing is the large-scale competition with local brands and international brands domestically and internationally (Anon, 2011a et al). The fierce competition â€Å"not only has it been forced to scale back its plans for world domination, but it also now finds itself at risk in its home market against domestic rivals like Peak and 361 °, but also with global heavy hitters Nike and Adidas† (Sauer, 2012).The difference is that language might be the main barrier Li Ning needs to face in international market (Zhang, 2012). With a view to the situation, on the one hand, Li Ning decided to slow the pace of new openings and close some inefficient stores to curtail expense and store energy (Ranasinghe, 2012); on the other hand, Li Ning would enter the second-tier cities to achieve next phase of growth (Anon, 2012). To sum up, in internal aspect, Li Ning chooses both entity sales and e-commerce sales at home and abroad. Different focuses are determined due to large name reputation difference.To achieve more popularity, Li Ning focuses on Olympic Games and sports super stars with different slogans. Furthermore, in external aspect, facing the customers’ different consumption views on Chinese brands domestically and internationally, Li Ning transforms its attention to younger people and set new different target groups both domestic and foreign. Li Ning has been facing increased competition with global names and local rivals, and what is why Li Ning determines to slow the pace of new openings and enter the second-tier cities.In future, Li Ning could make greater br eakthrough by implementing brand strategy, constructing international brand image, developing technology innovation and improving enterprises’ core competitiveness (Zhang, 2012). References: Anon. (2011a) Li-Ning plans global push [online] London Warc. Available from: http://www. warc. com/Content/News/Li-Ning_plans_global_push. content? ID=e7907838-2cd7-4859-ae44-f1695abdbd52= (Accessed: 3 October 2012). Anon. (2011b) China's Li-Ning Takes on Nike, Adidas With U.S. E-Commerce Site [online] New York Ad Age. Available from: http://adage. com/article/cmo-interviews/china-s-li-ning-takes-nike-u-s-e-commerce-site/231642/ (Accessed: 3 October 2012) Anon. (2012) China's sportswear brands nurse Olympics hangover [online] China Chinadaily. Available from: http://www. chinadaily. com. cn/business/londongames/2012-07/02/content_15542591. htm (Accessed: 3 October 2012). Enright, A. (2012) Li-Ning makes its U. S. debut [online] Chicago Internetretailer.Available from: http://www. interne tretailer. com/2012/01/16/li-ning-makes-its-us-debut (Accessed: 3 October 2012). Qinqin, D. (n. d. ) Comparative analysis of Chinese and Western Sporting Goods Enterprises’ Growth Pattern. Wuhan, China: Dept. of Sports Economics & Management, Wuhan Inst. of P. E. Ranasinghe, D. (2012) No Medals for China’s Sportswear Firms [online] US CNBC. Accessed from: http://www. cnbc. com/id/48454835/No_Medals_for_China_s_Sportswear_Firms (Accessed: 3 October 2012). Sauer, A. 2012) London 2012: Success as Li-Ning ‘Makes a Change' in Olympics Strategy [online] London Brandchannel. Available from: http://www. warc. com/Content/News/Li Ning_plans_global_push. content? ID=e7907838-2cd7-4859-ae44-f1695abdbd52= (Accessed: 3 October 2012). Voight, J. (2012) Video Is Lifeblood of Li-Ning's ‘New China' Sneaker Launch [online] New York Clickz. Available from: http://www. clickz. com/clickz/news/2166538/video-lifeblood-li-nings-china-sneaker-launch (Accessed: 3 October 2012). Wen , W. 2012) Li Ning rejoins race in children's wear market [online] China Chinadaily. Available from: http://www. chinadaily. com. cn/business/2012-05/12/content_15276320. htm (Accessed: 3 October 2012). Zhang, D. (2011) Li-Ning sportswear looks to win overseas [online] London BBC. Available from: http://www. bbc. co. uk/news/business-12665597 (Accessed: 3 October 2012). Zhang, X. (2012) ‘Marketing Plan for Li-Ning Product Expansion in UK’, Lecture Notes in Information Technology, Vol(14), Wuhan, China: Dept. of Sports Economics & Management, Wuhan Inst. of P. E.