Compare and Contrast the Marketing Strategies of Li Ning

With Chinese economy developing rapidly recent years and the huge success of 2008 Beijing Olympics, Chinese sportswear market has emerged a blooming scene. Not only the mighty foreign brands such as Nike and Adidas win the favor of Chinese people, which took 10. 5% and 7. % of mainland sportswear transactions respectively in 2011, the domestic brands such as Li Ning and Anta also occupy large market share (China Daily, 2012). Li Ning, the Chinese domestic sportswear brand which bears the name of renowned Chinese gymnastic athlete Li Ning, acts a leading role in Chinese sportswear market. Only secondly to Adidas, Li Ning possesses 7. 2% market share and keeps expanding (China Daily, 2012). Not satisfied with its immense domestic achievement, Li Ning strives for more enormous stage and switches its target to international market since 2011.

Notably, on the one hand, the domestic marketing strategies of Li Ning, such as opening and streamlining numerous retail stores, are somehow quite different from the international strategies like using e-commerce approach. On the other hand, the strategies domestically and internationally also share several similarities like attaching importance to branding. The emphasis of this essay is to compare and contrasts the domestic and international marketing strategies of Li Ning. Although to some extent few of these strategies are alike, Li Ning has largely followed diverse approaches domestically and internationally.

To begin with, there are some similarities between the market strategies of Li Ning domestically and internationally, such as investing more in branding to cultivate its long-term competitiveness. Specifically, both domestic and international strategies take steps to sponsor famed athletes or sports team to advertise the high quality and advanced functionality of its products, which aims to make people hold a favorable impression of Li Ning. For instance, in 2012 London Olympics, various overseas medal candidates like Spain’s basketball team were signed with Li Ning (Brandchannel, 2012).

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Also, Li Ning grasped Chinese top gold medal forecasts in multifarious sports events like ping pong and badminton, which includes Lin Dan and Wu Mingxia who enjoy the high popularity among Chinese people (Brandchannel, 2012). Especially, the athletes who are sponsored by Li Ning are inspired to publicize Li Ning not only by wearing its products. For example, immediately after Lin Dan won the gold though the spectacular final game, the logo of Li Ning at the jersey of Lin was tugged to display a gesture of appreciations, which makes the effect of advertising cracking (Brandchannel, 2012).

Furthermore, domestic strategies are also similar to international strategies in targeting young generations. Domestically, Li Ning replaced old logo and slogan to make the brand more abut to the generation born after 1990s as well as establishes new “sixth-generation stores” which attracting young clients (China Daily, 2011). World widely, Li Ning also focuses on young people because they are unbiased to Chinese brands, accustomed to shopping online and generally spend so much time surfing the Internet, which opportunely corresponds to the e-commerce strategy of Li Ning (Ad Age, 2011).

Although the domestic and international strategies share some similarities, they nevertheless employ fundamentally different approaches in a number of key areas, such as using different channels to sell products. In other words, the strategies domestically direct to sell inventories mainly in solid shops, whereas the international strategies prefer using e-commerce, event marketing and digital media. In detail, numerous retail shops spread all over China are owned by Li Ning.

Also, confronted the cooling Chinese economy in recent times, in order to raise the efficiency of entity sales, the company adopts measures that streamlining the network of the retail stores and entering lower tiers cities to speed eliminating premium brands by merger and acquisition(China Daily, 2012). When it turns to worldwide, to shun retail channels, Li Ning established its appropriative e-commerce sites as the only passageway to its products and released a delicate teaser video heavily on its Facebook page and twitter account (Voight, 2012).

Also, microsites and events are relied to induce online buzz (Voight, 2012). In addition, the domestic and international strategies are dissimilar in the slogan and the images they are intended to shape. Domestically, Li Ning created a new slogan “make the change” to indicate that greatness is not undying, only changes can be perpetual, which not only nettles the slogan of Nike “Live through your greatness”, but also remodels the impression of Chinese people on Li Ning as a more high-end brand (Brandchannel, 2012).

Internationally, the slogan “straight out of new China” demonstrates that its products leverage its rich Chinese culture and are diverse from the cheap, rough made-in-China goods as old perception considered (Voight, 2012). Furthermore, with regards to new marketing segments need to be expanded, Li Ning focus on Children garment domestically while women market segment internationally. Cooperated with local children garment firm Paclantic to design more attractive children sports and leisure clothing, the clothes could be sold in the franchised stores and affiliated shops of Li Ning in China (Wang, 2012).

Nevertheless, the market segment of women who do not need intramuscular figures and desire equal positions with men are attached importance to by the international strategies of Li Ning (Warc, 2011). In summary, this essay has made comparisons and contrasts between the marketing strategies of Li Ning domestically and internationally. The domestic strategies, like the international ones, have strong sponsor awareness and also aim to attract younger generations.

Despite that the international and domestic strategies have to some degree implemented similar strategies; essentially approaches are adopted in crucial areas, such as using different slogans, selling products by different channels and expanding different market segments. Although the e-commerce method ingeniously avoids complex retail channels internationally and the notion to achieve long-term profits domestically seem to be reasonable, Li Ning may ot achieve so many profits as they expected, because its vague brand positioning might cause the confusion and misconstrue of domestic people and its international consumers may despise Li Ning for its imitative logo and slogan which have some resemblance to Nike and Adidas. It is suggested that Li Ning should slow down its expansion and invest more to raise the quality and make some innovations instead of having large inventories discounted as a result of expanding too fast. Also, to have explicit brand positioning is crucial.

Nonetheless, as Li Ning keeps adjusting corresponded to the changing situation and creating new products, it is too early to definitively judge whether Li Ning will have a promising future.

References list

1. Ad Age (2011). China's Li-Ning Takes on Nike, Adidas With U. S. E-Commerce Site. [online] New York: Ad Age. Available from: http://adage. com/article/cmo-interviews/china-s-li-ning-takes-nike-u-s-e-commerce-site/231642/. (Accessed 12 October 2012)
2. Brandchannel (2012). London 2012: Success as Li-Ning 'Makes a Change' in Olympics Strategy. [online] New York: brandchannel. Available from: http://www. randchannel. com/home/post/2012/08/13/London-2012-Li-Ning-081312. aspx. (Accessed: 12 October 2012)
3. China Daily (2011). Li Ning expects business to slow. [online] Beijing: China Daily. Available from: http://www. chinadaily. com. cn/bizchina/2011-01/18/content_11874065. htm. (Accessed: 12 October 2012)
4. China Daily (2012). China's sportswear brands nurse Olympics hangover. [online] Beijing: China Daily. Available from: http://www. chinadaily. com. cn/business/londongames/2012-07/02/content_15542591. htm. (Accessed: 12 October 2012)
5. Voight, J. (2012). Video Is Lifeblood of Li-Ning's 'New China' Sneaker Launch. online] Charlotte: ClickZ. Available from: http://www. clickz. com/clickz/news/2166538/video-lifeblood-li-nings-china-snea ker-launch. (Accessed: 12 October 2012)
6. Warc (2011). Li-Ning plans global push. [online] London: Warc. Available from: http://www. warc. com/Content/News/Li-Ning_plans_global_push. content? ID=e7907838-2cd7-4859-ae44-f1695abdbd52;q. ( Accessed: 12 October 2012)
7. Wang, W. (2012). Li Ning rejoins race in children's wear market. [online] Beijing: China Daily. Available from: http://www. chinadaily. com. cn/business/2012-05/12/content_15276320. htm. (Accessed: 12 October 2012)

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