<p><strong>“CSR and political consumption – a study of Nike’s and Puma’s CSR-reports”</strong></p><p>The purpose of this dissertation is to examine if political consumption has influenced multinational corporations to improve their Corporate Social Responsibility reports and policies more, than a company who has not been a target for political consumption.</p><p>This dissertation is a content analysis of Nike’s and Puma’s first (Nike 2001, Puma 2001) and latest (Nike 2007/09, Puma 2007/08) CSR- reports. Archie Carroll’s model of Corporate Social Responsibility is used as theoretical framework in this study. The model is used to focus on four areas within CSR; economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic. There has been delimitation in these four areas. Considering the economic area the study focuses on minimum wage, the legal area is focusing on minimum age, the ethical area is focusing on dialogue with stakeholders and control of suppliers and the philanthropic area is focusing on non-profit organization, projects and programs.</p><p>The results indicate that political consumption in the case of Nike, has no impact on the company to improve their CSR-report but they have improved their policy against CSR. In comparison to Nike, Puma has changed more from the first report until the latest. This could be because it is more generally popular to work with CSR today. Compared to Puma, Nike has changed more considering their policy against CSR. </p><p><em>Keywords: Archie Carroll’s Pyramid of Corporate Social Responsibility, Change, Corporate Social Responsibility Report, Multinational Corporations, Nike, Policy, Political consumption, Puma</em></p>

This research report aims to examine and evaluate the ways in which two leading running product companies, Nike and Brooks Running, Inc., target female runners in the context of Runner’s World magazine (the world’s leading running-related magazine). It presents relevant past research, theories and methodologies and applies them to the analysis. From the analysis and comparisons, a collection of best practice recommendations are determined in order to inform and advise any company’s future advertising efforts directed at female runners. / text

Digital platforms have established new ways within marketing for consumers and brands to interact. This has called for a paradigm shift denoting a phenomenon of shifting consumer and company roles, creating opportunities for interaction and value creation. Nike – the worlds biggest sports apparel company – has succeeded in embracing these new conditions with their digital service application Nike+ and the related brand community. This case study of Nike+ sets out to investigate how these new structural conditions of digital platforms have affected the interactions between consumer and firm at the level of the brand. Ten semi- structured interviews with users of the Nike+ application were conducted together with a netnography of the Nike Running forum on Facebook. The data revealed how firms with the use of digital platforms, independent of locational boundaries, can form a synergy that allows for interaction and value creation for both brand and consumer. Consumers are given flexibility in the creation of brand experience, through the resources facilitated by the brand, hence having the opportunity to create and co-create useful value. From the process of this synergy brands are given a “second life” in the digitized sphere. A “second life” where consumer and brand process cooperate in order to influence each other’s processes as well as being a way to claim a central place in the everyday life of the consumer.

This paper aims to measure the economic impact of different NBA player achievements on the athletic apparel companies, Nike, Adidas, and Under Armour. It looks at players affiliated with the brands who participated in three different events in the NBA from from 2007 to 2017: the All-Star game, the All-NBA awards, and starting lineups in the Finals. Monthly stock returns for each company were calculated for the months the events took place: January, February, May, and June. The return of each company was then regressed on total number of players each company had in the events. Four total regressions were run for the months of January, February, May, and June. Understanding the economic implications of endorsed players participating in these events can help athletic apparel companies draft more cost efficient endorsement contracts.

This case describes how Nike, a consumer goods company with an ever expanding portfolio and a tremendous brand value, manages the tradeoff between local responsiveness and global integration. In particular, the case highlights Nike's organizational structure that consists of a global matrix organization that is replicated at a regional level for the European market. While this organizational structure allows Nike to respond to local consumer tastes it also ensures that the company benefits from integration advantages such as global marketing and sourcing. Supported by rich quotes from Nike managers on various organizational levels, this case draws a colorful picture of all the challenges involved that come with matrix and regional structures. Will Nike be able to better exploit its competitive advantage by introducing more regional structures in the future? What is the logic behind the Nike's regional structure? / Series: WU Case Series

Current debates about representations of female athletes in the media consist mainly of textual analyses research produced by scholars who observe the topic from different theoretical frameworks. To better comprehend the relation between women athletes and media’s representation of them, in particularly advertising, this thesis aims to converse with up-and-coming professional and collegiate sportswomen as a way to examine what kind of correlation, if any, there is between sports commercials’ portrayals of female athletes and their actual reality. As there has been a shift in sports marketing approaches towards women through ‘femvertising’ (which challenges traditional gender stereotypes), a common belief is that gender equality in sport has been achieved. Taken as my case study, I use Nike’s commercials I Feel Pretty (2006) and Dream Crazier (2019) as auxiliary ‘props’ to get the discussion about advertisements’ representations of female athletes off ground in my conversations with several women athletes. Nike stands as one of the most prominent sporting brands in the world, and since the early 90s, the brand has been leading in “female athlete empowerment” advertising. Thus, by conducting a focus group interview in addition to in-depth semi-structured interviews with women athletes from the United States and Europe, the analysis draws on a postfeminist critique as a way to better understand the relation between the representations of sportswomen in sport advertisements versus their real-life experiences. Ultimately, the results of this research work imply that even though sport brands make a good case for the visibility of sportswomen, it does not match the experiences of the female athletes without celebrity status. Finally, this thesis is a contribution to the field of media and communication studies as it privileges the voices of up-and-coming professional and collegiate female athletes. It serves in hope of inspiring other scholars to further investigate sport in relation to gender and media through the lived experiences of the sportswomen about which they theorize.

Den stereotypiska framställningen av kvinnor i reklam har länge präglats av sexuella och objektifierande anspelningar.  Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur Nike använder sig av det feministiska begreppet femvertising, som tar ställning mot den traditionella framställningen av kvinnor, i utvalda klipp från reklamfilmerna Dream Crazier och Dream With Us som båda släpptes under 2019. Detta görs genom att studera hur kvinnorna och tjejerna i de utvalda klippen framställs och vilka återkommande teman som går att utläsa ur materialet. Studiens teoretiska ramverk utgörs av feministisk teori, den manliga blicken, femvertising, genusteori, genussystem och könsstereotyper. Undersökningen genomfördes med en kvalitativ textanalys i samspel med semiotik, där denotation och konnotation utgjorde grunden i det analysschema som togs fram för att besvara studiens frågeställningar. Vidare analyserades materialet med hjälp av de redan etablerade semiotiska analysbegreppen gaze, setting, pose och kameravinkel.   I resultatet framgår det att kvinnorna och tjejerna i de utvalda klippen och sekvenserna från de två reklamfilmerna framställs på ett normbrytande sätt och att det finns tydliga uttryck för femvertising genom de stärkande budskapen som förmedlas. Framställningarna motsäger också den traditionella kvinnliga stereotypen inom reklam som präglas av passivitet och sexualisering. I stället återfinns flera traditionellt sett maskulina tendenser och attribut som styrka, makt och självförtroende i de kvinnliga framställningarna. / The stereotypical portrayal of women in advertising has been characterized by sexual and objectifying allusions for a long time. The purpose of this study is to analyze Nike’s use of the feminist concept femvertising, which takes a stand against traditional portrayals of women, in selected clips from the two commercials Dream Crazier and Dream With Us, both released in 2019. This is done by studying how the women and the girls in the selected clips are being portrayed, and what themes that can be identified in the analyzed material. The study’s theoretical framework consists of feminism, the male gaze, femvertising, gender theory, gender systems and gender stereotypes. The study was conducted with a qualitative text analysis combined with semiotics, where denotation and connotation forms the basis of the analysis scheme that was developed to answer the study’s framing of questions. Furthermore, the material was analyzed using the already established semiotic analysis concepts gaze, setting, pose and camera angle. The results show that the women and the girls in the selected clips and sequences from the two commercials are portrayed in a norm-breaking way and that the commcercials contain a clear expression of femvertising through the empowering messages that are being conveyed. The presentation of the women and the girls also contradict the traditional female stereotype in advertising, which is characterized by passivity and sexualisations. Instead, many traditionally masculine attributes, such as strength, power and self-confidence are found in the female portrayal.

Nike is a prominent company that engages in brand activism, a marketing approach wherein they brand themselves as socially progressive by adopting public stances on controversial social issues. Because Nike resides at the intersection of media and sports, both of which are institutions that gender plays an important role in, an exploration of how Nike constructs gender in its commercials may illuminate the authenticity of its brand activism and progressive politics. Through a content analysis of 131 commercials released by Nike in the past decade, I explore whether their reputation as a socially progressive company extends to genuinely diverse and inclusive portrayals of gender in their commercials, or if they instead continue to rely on gender stereotypes. My results indicate that Nike commercials continue to treat sports as a predominantly masculine realm in which male athletes compete, therefore marginalizing athletes who are female or who do not display traditional masculine qualities. I also find that the bulk of athletes portrayed by Nike are those that adhere to gender stereotypes, indicating that Nike chooses to reinforce hegemonic masculine ideals rather than being genuinely inclusive and progressive in regard to gender.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka och belysa faktorerna som kommer till uttryck i reklamfilmer, utifrån Hofstedes nationskulturella perspektiv. Detta genom att granska tre olika idrottsrelaterade bolag utifrån tre olika marknader. En kvalitativ metod tillämpades genom att observera tolv reklamkampanjer, fördelat på fyra per bolag. Detta för att skapa förutsättningar för att utförligt svara på studiens syfte och frågeställningar. Resultatet visar att vi utifrån studien kan dra slutsatsen att företagen inte använder sig av endast ett tillvägagångssätt, i vad som kommer till uttryck i videoklippen. Dock finns underlag som talar för en standardisering hos alla tre företagen ur ett globalt perspektiv. Det förekommer också en lokal anpassning som däremot uttrycker sig olika bland företagen.

In 2018 Nike collaborated with controversial NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick on their 30th anniversary of their "Just Do It" campaign. Released on multiple platforms, the "Dream Crazy" campaign as it was labeled featured Kaepernick as well as other prominent athletes that broke all odds to become some of the biggest athletes in their sport. A prominent figure in the fight against racial injustice, Kaepernick triggered outrage when he started kneeling during the playing of the national anthem of the United States of America. Drawing from theories of Corporate Social Responsibility and Cause-Related Marketing, this thesis analyses media coverage of the "Dream Crazy" marketing campaign to understand why Nike would collaborate with Kaepernick. Employing qualitative thematic analysis, this thesis examined newspaper articles published around the release of the campaign. Research findings show that Nike received positive coverage as well as over forty-three million dollars in free media exposure. While some individuals burned their apparel in protest, Nike saw sales increase as consumers sought to demonstrate their support for Kaepernick and racial justice. Simultaneously, the campaign made the fight for racial justice a front-page topic as well as exposing Kaepernick's own struggle with being blackballed by the NFL for his public protests.