Strategic Sports Marketing - The impact of sport advertising upon consumers : Adidas - A Case Study

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2008 in the subject Sport - Sport Economics, Sport Management, grade: 2,0, Cardiff University, course: International Business Management, 16 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The study was based on the subject that is of great interest of the author and therefore attempted to illustrate an evaluation of the impact of Adidas advertising upon purchase decisions of consumers nowadays. To enable the author to provide an evaluation of Adidas' marketing strategies, the present importance of marketing and modern challenges of advertising decisions were determined as fundamentals of a global brand based on review of relevant literature. Furthermore, an investigation of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) related to companies in the sports industry was conducted. Moreover the benefits of a global brand were illustrated. This examination was mainly based on marketing specialised literature linked with selected examples of Adidas as no representative of the Adidas company was found to be interviewed. On the one hand it was found that Adidas' historically grown passion for sports in order to provide athletes with the best possible equipment positively contributes to improve brand awarness and brand image. On the other, it was found that the identified weaknesses reduce the effectiveness of global operations in order to improve consumer satisfaction throughout the world. The research concluded that although the strategic marketing operations of the Adidas company can be reduced by weaknesses and threats, the advertising decisions represent a promising source of enhancing the brand image.