Heather Crawford's Blog

Nike and Adidas are both popular athletic clothing and equipment brands that fiercely compete in the same competitive market.  You see sports team, athletes, and everyday people sporting either the Nike “swoosh” symbol or the Adidas three stripes.  Each sells the same style products for enhanced performance, but they also create different campaigns that they hope will attract and pull market consumers to their brand.  In order to compare the two we must look at both their points of parity and points of difference.

As Nike and Adidas are both athletic wear companies they share multiple points of parity, one in particular being their individual electronic performance technology that allows you to train on your own time and at your own pace.  Nike focuses on their Nike+ product, that along with Apple, allows runners to track their distance, pace, calories burned, and heart rate, then send their stats online where they can set goals and join challenges.  Similarly Adidas has the miCoach Pacer that like Nike+ tracks pace, heart rate, and stride.

In terms of points of difference Nike and Adidas are both running campaigns that are individual to their brands.  Nike has created in the NikeiD series where you can customize your own shoes and gear.  Therefore appealing to customers who like to create their own style and unique identity.  For those consumers who are focused on being eco-friendly, Adidas is the in process of working on a sustainable performance clothing that will be good both for the buyer and the earth.

With similar price points it’s hard to choose between Nike and Adidas, but their goal is to hold some attribute that makes you chose one over the other based on their points of difference.

http://www.nike.com/nikeos/p/nike/en_CA/?&ref=

http://www.adidas.com/ca/homepage.asp