Market Business Management
Market Surveillance Plan
Sports is now-a-days dealt as a business, moreover it is regarded as a profitable business. Sports attract a large number of advertisers and sponsors which float million dollars of revenue. Sports Revenue Management is done in 4 stages i.e. 1) Integration
2) Promotion 3) Allocation 4) Distribution. - Sports Management and Ethics Melvin Keller, Oxford Publications 1998.
Sports Promotion and Sales Management
Sports Organization is said to be in business when it has a these three sources.
Sponsors, Media and Fans which contribute to the profitable business as a whole. According to Sergio Zyman, who is a marketing expert at Coca-Cola, said that Sports Marketing is supposed to sell stuff and image, where common trade selling and buying takes place. Harvard Press - Marketing in Sports, 2005
Pre-Game Sales Management: Pre-Game is defined as the management role in collecting the sponsors and educating the fans about the sporting event. Sport Ticket Sales also comes in this stage. Sponsorship is a key part in the sport, which is interdependent on the level of fans response and media interest. Now-a-days Sports Organizations are also using the advantage of Internet in making sports more flexible business. They are using online auctioning of sports tickets and also using for the advertising purposes.
Euro Football Association has proved this scenario by selling half a million tickets online for the Euro Cup in 2008 and now other sport organizations like Wimbledon and US Tennis Association have also started to make business from this. Sports Profit at Euro Cup, 2008 article by Martin Mathew at dailymail.co.uk
Post-Game Wrap-up: Sales is like lifeblood of any Sports Organization and thus it is very crucial for the survival. Sales Interactions need to be not only inbound responding to the customer's needs and enquiries, but also outbound. Sport Organizations should have a great degree of Vision, Creativity and Approach towards customers and sponsors.
There should be a valued customer service that should be analyzed and provided to the customer. Sports Organizations should be able to retain the customers for the next sporting event, which is called as Customer Retention at Sport - Customer Service Management, David Ganglia, 2005. Sport Ticketing is the crucial part of sales management at sports. Specialized sales men should be employed with training and with customer's perception. Sports Organizations can also use the internet for marketing purposes.
A Sports Organizations analyze the working business as - Sponsorship Management and Customer Management. This includes both sales and retention policies and guidelines. Sports Organizations also used licensing as a promotional tool, where it is easy to attract sponsors. Sports business is also similar to the normal trading business, where the majority of the business lies with the Sporting and Gamming Brands. Sports Organizations should develop brand awareness and response from both the fans as wells as sponsors in order to make it a profitable event.
For Example: If we see US open, which is brand event in United States we can see that there will more than 50 sponsors for the entire event. In the same way if we see the other Tennis tournaments organized by small organization we have only 5-10 sponsors listed.
Sports Surveillance Plan
Introduction and Description
This plan is organized to give guidelines that will be used to analyze and investigate the selling and manufacturing of the counterfeit sports apparels and merchandise, which is considered as the profitable business. The Sports Surveillance Plan is also used to prevent these consequences. With technology is growing and demand is increasing for sport apparels and merchandise, the counterfeits are using this technology and manufacturing the fake merchandise and making a big market as a whole. There are few safeguards that can be used to separate original products from the duplicate counterfeits.
Counterfeits mainly target on collectible products such as apparels, sports wear including shoes and other items, which economically hurts athletes and also the brands like Nike, Adidas, and Puma etc. Sports Organizations also claim that they also hurt fans in many ways who wants to buy the authentic merchandise to remember the sport.
Observations
It is globally observed that the counterfeits copy the trade and rights and make duplicate sports merchandise. These counterfeits are said to be small home based or medium scale enterprises, which are mainly based in Asian countries. Counterfeits on Sports, Observation on Asian Market, 2005
China has the large volume of counterfeits in the world, where there are units which can make all types of sports merchandising which are followed by Indonesia, Thailand and South Korea. Illegal Sport Trade, Magazine published by Sports World, 2007
Market Description and Process of Counterfeiting
Sports merchandising market is a huge profitable market with more than 50 dominant players but the main problem they face is Counterfeiting. Now-a-days sports apparel and merchandise industry is facing more problems, even though they have a perfect copyright and trademark to sell the original merchandise, the counterfeits interrupt in the business with illegal trading. It is seen that Nike spends more than $150 million every year to advertise its products and the largest brand in counterfeits is Nike. It is observed that they claim more than $86 million of sales by counterfeits in the year 2007 alone. Sports World, 2007
Companies have started to promote there products through a new media i.e. Internet, such as online auction websites and physical store outlets. But there is a concern in this media is e-bay, which doesn't collect accurate owner information. With the widespread of internet and the since it is a global platform this media helped companies and Sport Organization to successfully reach billions of customers. Now the counterfeits also take the advantage on the auction sites and they are now seem to start auction sites of there own where bargaining is done for a large amounts, buyer who thinks that it was a good deal goes for a Counterfeit Product. - Business Wire, 2006 January 18th.
Companies should take some necessary steps in stopping this illegal trade, by educating buyers about how to identify the original product and introducing high profiled products. Governments and Trade mark institutes should take several new rules to avoid this counterfeit in sports merchandising. Sports Research Magazine, 2007 Defeats in Sports
Effectiveness of Incentive Promotions
Incentive Promotions is a psychological factor that motivates the sporting customers to the game. Providing Incentives for customer can attract them to the sporting event, although discounting is a very good Incentive Promotion strategy, but it can attract a few numbers of audiences. Discounting of the core product price tends to dilute the quality and the image of the Sports Organization. There is also a sustained risk from the full paying customers.
We have two types of Sport Incentive Promotions,
Traditional Incentives - such as price discounting and apparel and prize distributing.
Behavioral Response Incentives - such as membership coupons, affiliation, fun and festival etc...
By respecting and rewarding the loyal customers, generating trials among new customers and seasonal prices, it is observed that the Incentive Promotional Strategy in sports will help the Sporting Organizations to build the business. Sport Promotion and Sales Management by Richard L. Irwin, William A. Sutton, Larry M. McCarthy, 2nd Edition
References
Harvard Press - Marketing in Sports, Commercialization of Sports 2005
Sports Profit at Euro Cup, 2008 article by Martin Mathew at dailymail.co.uk
Counterfeit Sports Products Business Wire, 2006 January 18th
Sport Promotion and Sales Management by Richard L. Irwin, William A. Sutton, Larry M. McCarthy, 2nd Edition
Illegal Sport Trade, Magazine published by Sports World, 2007
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