Case Study from Chapter 3: Nike Becomes Technology Company

1. Provide a one-page summary identifying major issues.

Nike is a major footwear, clothing and sportswear supplier in the United States. Today Nike is considered the world’s leading supplier of athletic shoes and apparel and one of the world’s

most famous and strongest brands, the strengths that Nike takes pride getting the most

popular athletes to sponsor their products rather than creating competitions or events. The innovative of this comes from the idea that consumers remember the brand worn by sports stars and not the brand that sponsors major events.

The technology is always changing in the retail market, as well as the sporting market, this is why innovation it’s so important Nike has the ability to have the most recent trends of fashion involving their sports equipment, shoes, tennis, and clothing is vital to generate more profit, Nike has a bulky worldwide market and a great acceptance of their merchandise all over the world because they focus their efforts on what the consumers wants and expects, Nike historically had some of the most innovative products on the market.

Nike joins the Apple Company and launched the Nike plus line of products. This new technology brings costumers the ability to connect their apple devices to sensors inside shoes to record time, distance, pace, and calories burned. When you purchase a Nike fuel band you'll need to download the companion fuel band app to your iPhone. All data collected transferred from the fuel band. Consumers can see their statistics right on the screen of the fuel band without checking the apple products interface or the app. Nike fuel data accumulated of the day, calories, steps, and distance just with a push of a button will bring the stats you’re reach during the day, the screen on the Nike fuel is very different from others devices and is visible in any kind of lighting.

Nike and Apple expected their partnership to become more valuable over time, as they learned more about how customers were responding to the products they were creating and introduced new products that satisfied unmet needs. For example, they eventually began incorporating Nike plus technology into fitness equipment and health clubs, created Nike plus products that measured heart rate and expanded the Nike plus application to other iPod devices besides the Nano. It is likely that Apple and Nike didn’t pursue these opportunities because they wanted to tackle less complex undertakings first. Instead, they first focused on meeting the basic need of runners to enjoy music and track their workouts. This innovation simplicity also gave Nike and Apple flexibility in the design of the product as it matured in the market.

2. Answer Case Study Questions 1 through 3 at the end of the case study. Evaluate Nike using the competitive forces and value chain models.

The competitive force that Nike utilize to position in the market over their competitors, with huge amounts of profit, is their strategies they utilize to convince their partners is managing very well their value chain, to ensure that the development of their new products they will put on the market meets the design, development and distribution requirements of quality to provide their customers the best possible product that meet their expectations but the success of Nike came from the value chain they have in place.

What competitive strategies is Nike pursuing?

The trend of Nike its growth and all that great position that makes them grow each year it’s their innovative business model which provide the company as leader in this industry is their product differentiation over their other competitors, like the Jordan tennis shoes that every kid wanted because they believe they can play like Jordan with the shoes, that influence with their marketing campaigns position Nike as the leader in the industry, in order to create this illusion for the consumers, they invest a bunch of money in their marketing department, with over 50 million dollars just on this field, they tried to highlight their brand with the fantasy of the stars behind their marketing campaigns.

How is information technology related to these strategies?

Nike with trying to make their products and experience to their consumers unique partnership with Apple to innovate the industry of the shoes, installing sensors to collect data and send to their partners devices like the iPod or iPhone’s increasing the sensation of their consumers that are on top of the technology and also interact with other devices that they already have, and utilize every day, also providing the new customizable products consumers can have a very unique item just as their partners did a while ago to their devices like engraving their names, Nike now allow consumers to create and customize colors and textures on their shoes.

In what sense is Nike a “Technology”?

When Nike lunch the Nike+ it change the game plan for the industry and is leading since then, this technology provide the consumer the data, stats and trend of their lifestyle changing their routines now the consumer can monitor and adjust their lifestyle having the data collected as they perform their schedule, every movement and activity its measured, and that technology is fully customizable, and that is what the customers want they like to feel they have the control of everything they buy, with all this features also Nike have Blogs, communities and of course coaching tips to have healthier life.

How much of an edge does Nike have over its competitors?

Nike has become the industry leader and the main reason for this is that they signed super stars of all kind of sports from football to hockey, promoting their brand wear by super athletes over the world attracts more customers to wear and purchased their brand.

The main advantage over their competitors is the ability to innovate and to provide better products at a lower cost, even their major competitors like Adidas can’t keep with them, the reason they are copying what Nike lunch to the market they just follow and don’t innovate as much as Nike.

3. Discuss five moral dimensions of the information age as they pertain to Internet tools and technologies such as the iPad (refer to Chapter 4).

The major ethical, social, and political issues raised by information systems include the following moral dimensions, referring to the iPad:

Information Rights and obligations: Privacy and freedom in the information age

What information rights do individuals and social institutions such as organizations have?

When we talk about the right to privacy the apple products and this include the iPad, they capture data from the devices. The customers don’t read the apple disclosure that clearly tell the customers data will be collected, they don’t read all the information, they need to inform the clients that they are being monitored.

Accountability, Liability and Control

Who can and will end up being accountable and liable for the harm done to individual and collective information and property rights?

The Apple Company should be held accountable for their actions. Due to the company having no usage policy in place, it’s immoral for them to take the social practices of customers and keep a record of telephone calls, Web sites and email communication, GPS locations if they desire.

Systems Quality: Data quality and System error

What standard of data should be demanded to protect individual rights and safety in society?

The consumers of any product should need to know and read with caution, that they are providing access to all the data to these companies and that they are monitoring all of us with the whole purpose of gathering our lifestyle and sell new products to us, if we thinking positive it might be good because it can be used for several things.

Quality of life: Equity Access and Boundaries

What values should be preserved in an information – and knowledge - based society?

Even that the Information systems and new devices can be used as advantages such as increasing production in an organization, ethical values should be preserved because, violating somebody’s privacy or any type of computer abuse that a user perform is unethical.

4. Discuss the issue of privacy in activity trackers. What are some of the ramifications of data sharing?

All our devices now days gather a ton of data about our lives, and lifestyle depending on the apps you use and the settings you have on your phone, it can tell where you've been, who you most recently interact with, and all the passwords to your most private and personal accounts without counting all of your pictures.

But all that data is going to look old-fashioned compared to what's about to happen with the new technologies of wearable devices and of course more data collection about you and your trends that's even more personal, also the new technology companies are looking to track the details of our personal health, now days nothing is secure from hackers and they see a big opportunity into this information, the new wearable gadgets are going to become more and more obtainable to people, then we're going to have to fight against some serious complications like, putting our personal information at risk by connecting our phones to fitness bands or smart watches or if does anyone care that someone bargain statistics about your heart rate or calories burned will it worth the risk of having all this data collected, Even if most fitness trackers don't have a GPS sensor installed to track our location many other can sync with your phone through Bluetooth to transfer data and then GPS location will be record also all our routes we run as regular basis, this communication process among our phone and the fitness band could hypothetically broadcast info about your position and data could be compromise.

I think there are data collectors that will be very driven into get all this statistics, insurance companies and health care providers will become the possible clients of all this statistics, the main reason will be to have a profile of potential clients that had a sickness or a trend on their statistics that show a possible disease causing to increase their cost to the consumers that are more unhealthier or the trend will suggest they can have potentially a sickness will lead to denial as well to their insurance.

References

www.nike.com, 2008

www.nike.com (2004), press release; “The New Nike,” yahoo.com (2004), September 12.

A. Wong, “Nike: Just Don’t Do It,” Newsweek, November 1, 2004, p. 84.

www.nike, 2008.

www.channelseven.com/newsbeat/99features/news19990624.shtml, October 2003

www.urlwire.com/newsarchive/062499.html, October 2003

www.adidas-salomon.com/en/news/archive/2000/2000-07.asp, October 2003

www.cybersource.com/solutions/success_stories/nike.xml, October 2003

"Companies point fingers over Nike Web site hijacking." Computerworld. June 30, 2000