THE PROCESSES & FACTORS BEHIND PUMA’S SUCCESS - BY REPOSITIONING BRAND IMAGE THROUGH PERCEPTION

Absztrakt (kivonat)

The aim of the Thesis Work: The competition in brand positioning based on the brand image within the sports industry has become stronger. Consumers have a variety of choices among different sportswear brands. The diversification of sports products and the innovation of technology have brought greater challenges to the survival of brands. How to deal with the impact of competitors and cater to the preferences of consumers has also become an urgent problem for sports brands to solve. PUMA, as one of the biggest and famous sports brands worldwide, has used number of methods to be a fast pursuer in this field. In order to better develop and compete with the other brands, PUMA has been taking different and efficient branding strategies and finally got improvement and success. This Thesis aim to study the processes and factors behind PUMA’s success, and found out how could PUMA got improvement by repositioning its brand image. Methodology used: In this Thesis, primary and secondary research methods were both used to collect information. In primary research, surveys were applied as quantitative research. Professional/semi-professional sports players and randomly selected leisure sport participants were seen as target groups of the survey. The two groups were selected because it could give me a relatively comprehensive result and also PUMA’s product categories were set on the basis of this. As for the qualitative research, interviews were prepared for three group of participants: store managers from China, Hungary, and the US, representing Asia, Europe, and America, two professional sports players in soccer and athletics, and a PUMA loyal customer and a PUMA hater. By applying this grouping methods, it is efficient to collect information on the changes in product types and sales volume from different regions, the professional opinions about this brand, and also learn about why the customers have their perceptions. The structure of the Thesis Work: There are 5 main chapters in this Thesis including Introduction, Theoretical Background, Research Methodology, Analysis, and Conclusion. The Introduction chapter shows the relevancy and my motivation for choosing this topic, and also give some basic information about this Thesis. The most important thing is in this chapter, the Research Question and objectives will be proposed. In the Theoretical Background chapter, the secondary research method is applied to define what marketing and branding strategies did PUMA use and how did PUMA apply them. Then in the Research Methodology, surveys and interviews will be applied to collect information from different groups of participants for different purpose. After collecting the information that I need, they will be analyzed in the next chapter which is the Analysis to see whether PUMA’s strategies are successful or not through Primary and Secondary research. Finally, the summary of the outcome according to my research will be given in the Conclusion chapter. The results of the Thesis Work: Based on the research, PUMA definitely achieved great improvement and success through repositioning its brand image. Its main strategies such as innovation on products, technology development, corporation with stars both in fashion fields and professional sports, and also focus more on daily leisure products have been proved to effectively improve its brand image and status in the hearts of consumers. But at the same time, there are still several points PUMA needs to improve. For example, As a sports brand, heavy investment in leisure products will make its brand image unclear in consumers' mind. Also, if compared PUMA with the leading brands in the industry like Nike and Adidas, PUMA is still far behind and won't catch up any time soon. But generally speaking, PUMA’s processes and factors behind repositioning its brand image definitely made itself success and also creates a bright future of development.