: CASE STUDY ON NIKE-PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT:

INTRODUCTION:
Nike's 'swoosh' is one of the most recognizable logos in the world and, in just 32 years,
Nike has grown into a sports company and a sporting brand. Nike employs an estimated
24,300 people, and Nike suppliers, shippers, retailers, and service providers employ nearly
one million people on six continents. Nike's mission is to: 'Bringing inspiration and
innovation to all athletes in the world. 'The purpose of Nike companies is to help the
company achieve profitable growth and sustainability and to protect and improve the
product and the company. Nike believes that corporate governance should not separate
businesses but must be fully integrated. Nike's focus continues to seek to innovate, design,
and develop products to improve athletic performance. Its ambitious desire is to design
products with actual performance and technical benefits that help athletes perform better.
Nike scientists and designers have developed the Nike Free, and an athletic shoe described
as a training foot brace. Tagged with 'natural technology,' Nike Free is designed to copy the
barefoot running. By running barefoot, the foot becomes stronger, gaining greater flexibility
and range of motion, which leads to better performance because it is less prone to injury.

History and Definition of customer needs:

The new design is what makes Nike unique in the industry. It all started in 1971 when Bill
Bower man, then the University of Oregon track record coach, poured his wife's metal
rubber, hoping to make a new and better-running shoe for his athletes. The result - a simple
waffle that changed the whole world. Considering what consumers might need in their
boots, the next innovation came from Nike Air, a sturdy and lightweight safety shoe safety
system. Nike anticipated the need for a shoe with a repulsion system that would last longer
than foam, reduce shock, and relieve stress.

Research and development:

Nike improves its products and determines what doesn't make the cutting edge of
innovation. The Nike Sports Research Laboratory (NSRL) is located at the Nike Center in
Portland, Oregon, United States of America. The role of the research and development
center is to identify the physical needs of athletes. NSRL works directly with Nike's
construction teams and has established partnerships with major universities throughout Asia,
Europe, and North America. To research and make products, scientists have a wealth of
tools for measuring and analyzing. Their data collection includes various muscle sensors,
compression platforms, breath analyzers, foot scanners, and thermal imaging devices. There
are high-speed video cameras that capture ball kick data at 1,000 frames per second and a
scanner that produces, in just seconds, a complete digital image of your 3D foot. There are
testing areas, such as a large part of the basketball hardwood regulation, an artificial soccer
turf, a 70-meter trail trackway, and endless field inspections that take place outside in
various locations.

NSRL takes the concept, and researches, and then fixes the design time. While talking to
athletes and coaches, the designers spoke to Vin Lananna, then a track coach at Stanford
University, who told them about his unusual routine - having athletes run on the grass
without shoes. According to Lananna, the athletes were robust, healthy, and prone to injury.
This was a good idea, but it was against Nike's making and selling sports shoes. However,
this perspective has led to a comprehensive biomechanical research project to understand
better what happens when we walk barefoot. Sports shoes offer a certain amount of control
or kicking, depending on the perception that they are needed to complete the natural action
of the foot. Nike researchers wanted to know why Lananna's athletes, who run barefoot in
the gym, ran fast. Investigators brought ten men and ten women to run barefoot to see the
body's response without barefoot. They were videotaped with high-speed cameras to capture
their movements; they had visible markers attached to their joints to allow easy calculation
of the contact angles during their campaign and small sharp pressure sensors attached to the
soles of their feet to measure their impact with the ground. At the end of the test, Nike had a
complete picture of the biomechanics of running shoes that had never been seen before. The
challenge was translating that barefoot knowledge, which promotes good biomechanics for
athletes, into a shoe. Investigators made prototypes using any materials that could closely
copy uncluttered shoes. Next came the challenge of building a shoe. The shoe is built on the
type of foot, called the latter, which allows the upper and outer tent to be made of it.
Investigators had to develop a brand new one to copy how the shoes would work.

PRODUCTS:
Nike produces a wide range of sports equipment and apparel. Their first products were track
running shoes. Nike's range of products includes shoes, jerseys, shorts, cleats, base layers,
etc. for sports activities such as association football, basketball, track and field, combat
sports, tennis, American football, athletics, golf, ice hockey, and cross-training for men,
women, and children. Nike also sells shoes for activities such as skateboarding, baseball,
cycling, volleyball, wrestling, cheerleading, lacrosse, cricket, aquatic activities, auto racing,
and other athletic and recreational uses. Nike recently teamed up with Apple Inc. to produce
the Nike+ product that monitors a runner's performance via a radio device in the shoe that
links to the iPod nano. While the product generates useful statistics, it has been criticized by
researchers who were able to identify users' RFID devices from 60 feet (18 m) away using
tiny, concealable intelligence motes in a wireless sensor network.
CONCLUSION:
Nike aims to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world - and it considers
everybody to be an athlete. As a high-profile, industry-leading sports company, Nike
continually strives to keep itself at the forefront of product innovation and design. Through
extensive research and development, the Nike Free shoe was created to recognize that
barefoot running can strengthen athletes' feet and legs naturally. Nike Free was developed
after extensive research and product testing. With a strategic promotion campaign, Nike
hopes to deliver the message that Nike Free is not designed to replace athletic performance
footwear but to be an essential part of training, thus improving performance.