PUMA Ferrari

When people think about high performance sporting brand they will usually think of Nike or Addidas.  These two brands are associated with high profile atheletes from a broad range of sports: football, basketball, tennis and golf.  On the other hand, Puma is considered by most people to be an “inferior” brand.  Even though the quality of the products that these three companies produce are probably within the same range, customers perceived Nike and Addidas as being more valuable.  This is a cause of concern for Puma; assuming that the costs of making similar products are pretty much the same for all three companies, Puma’s sales margin would be lower than their competitors because they cannot set the prices as high as Nike or Addidas.

Walking into Foot Locker the other day, I have observed a strategy that Puma is using in order to improve the credential of the Puma brand.  Puma is currently offering a number of products that has both the Puma logo and the Ferrari logo:

http://www.shop.puma.com/collections/features/ferrari/62600,en_US,sc.html

This co-branding doesn’t really make any sense to me at first, but after giving it some thought I think it is very logical for Puma to do so.  They are using Ferrari’s image of being prestige, luxurious and sporty to add value to their products.  This way Puma is able to charge a little higher for their products without having to redesign or invent new merchandise.

The only thing that still puzzles me is why Ferrari would agree with this co-operation.  They are taking a risk of damaging their prestige and luxurious image by associating themselves with a commonly-perceived “inferior” brand like Puma…