Company Overview
Adidas Group, commonly known as simply Adidas, is popular all over the globe for its sportswear, footwear, and sports-related merchandise. Except for garments, the company produces and sells accessories and hardware equipment such as gloves, balls, bats, timepieces, bags, etc. The range of the products is wide enough to attract numerous customers with the most diverse tastes. Because the company has designed several lines of apparel and footwear, including Adidas Original, Porsche Design, Stella McCartney, it contributes to winning customers with various financial statuses. Adidas is a fast-growing company. Its revenues and net savings are constantly growing (Adidas Group with stellar financial performance in Q1 2016, 2016).
Adidas owes its financial success to the focus on the customer and high level of service quality except for the large assortment of goods and working on innovations (Lose control, gain love – speed factory, 2015).
The motivation for choosing Adidas for the company analysis is the fact that the United Arab Emirates has not become an exception in the trend of loving the company. In 2013, Adidas overtook Nike and became the most wanted sportswear brand in the UAE. The company does not want to stop at increasing its popularity and plans to open even more own-brand stores and keep on expanding its market (Euromonitor International, 2014). Such spectacular performance raises the question: What is the key to the company’s success?
The methodology of the Analysis
The primary objective of this task is to conduct the company analysis of Adidas in the United Arab Emirates. The focus will be made on the reflections of the employees, managers, and customers regarding the performance of the company. The survey is designed to have two phases, which will be interconnected. The first stage will cover the speculations of the Adidas employees and managers on the performance of the company with the special attention to challenges they face in their activities, the company’s philosophy regarding the quality of its goods and services, and, finally, how the company in the face of its employees and managers sees its customers.
The second phase of the investigation centers on the customers. Its primary goal is to determine whether there is a connection between the theory and practice, i.e., between what was said by the employees and managers and how it is implemented to reach higher levels of quality and customer satisfaction. That said, this two-stage research aims at determining whether Adidas is successful in incorporating such concepts as service quality, timing, anticipation, and communication in its business activities and what is the level of satisfaction with its service delivery strategy.
This survey will deploy individual interviews as a major tool for obtaining the required information. Interviews have proved to be effective for gathering the most relevant data when it is necessary to analyze individual perceptions of particular situations or phenomena (Myers, 2008). Nevertheless, it is vital to assure the interviewees that they will be guaranteed confidentiality in order to make them feel comfortable and be honest in their responses. So, before conducting interviews, all respondents will sign consents.
The first stage of the survey will involve ten individuals, including Adidas employees and managers. The justification for such a choice is to review the internal perceptions of the company’s performance. The focus will be made on guaranteeing the interviewees’ anonymousness. That is why they will be invited and interviewed separately. The interviews will be conducted in an unofficial atmosphere to hint at the respondents’ openness.
Because of the limited time and resources, the sample for the investigation will be relatively small. As it was mentioned, it will include ten respondents. The interviews will be made up of five open-ended questions, which will be broad enough and cover several topics of interest. In addition to it, they will be supplemented by the questionnaires, which will be deployed for gathering some general information regarding the respondents. The open-ended questions are as follows:
- What is the philosophy of Adidas concerning service quality?
- How do you view customers?
- How does the company’s strategy incorporate timing, communication, anticipation, and service quality?
- What are the main challenges you face when working with the company and the customers?
- How would you improve the performance of your company?
The questionnaires will include several questions such as:
- How old are you? Please, choose one of the options below:
- 18 – 24 years old.
- 25 – 34 years old.
- 35 – 44 years old.
- 45 – 59 years old.
- Older than 60 years.
- What is your gender? Please, choose one of the options below:
- Male.
- Female.
- What is your occupation in the company?
- Shop assistant.
- Manager.
- HR Manager.
- Other (please, specify).
- What is the level of satisfaction with working for Adidas in the light of organizing workflow and service quality philosophy?
- High.
- Medium.
- Low.
- Hard to say.
The second part of the investigation will focus on the company’s customers. The number of interviewees will be ten as well as in the case of the first stage. These respondents will be chosen among those attending Adidas retailer stores located in different shopping malls. The justification for such a choice is to guarantee the diversity of the sample. The primary objective is to find out the external perception of the company. All the rest conditions for conducting the interviews are preserved. The list of the open-ended questions will include the following ones:
- What have you heard about the Adidas philosophy regarding service quality?
- How do you view the performance of the employees?
- How satisfied are you with the quality of communication and timing at Adidas?
- What do you think should be improved in the company’s philosophy and strategy of delivering services?
- What were the main challenges you faced when dealing with the employees? What have they done to overcome the barriers?
The questionnaires will include the following questions:
- How old are you? Please, choose one of the options below:
- 18 – 24 years old.
- 25 – 34 years old.
- 35 – 44 years old.
- 45 – 59 years old.
- Older than 60 years.
- What is your gender? Please, choose one of the options below:
- Male.
- Female.
- How often do you shop at Adidas? Please, choose one of the options below:
- Once a week.
- Twice a month.
- Once a month.
- Once a season.
- Once a year.
- Other (please, specify).
- What do you usually buy at Adidas?
- Footwear.
- Apparel.
- Accessories.
- Swimwear.
- Other (please, specify).
- What is the level of your satisfaction with working for Adidas in the light of organizing workflow and service quality philosophy?
- High.
- Medium.
- Low.
- Hard to say.
Results of the Interviews
The interviews have demonstrated that the responses to the questions were, for the most part, similar. It is beneficial for conducting the analysis. However, it raises the issues concerning the sample and its sufficiency. Nevertheless, most respondents among managers and employees stated that the foundation of the company’s service quality philosophy is the focus on the needs of the customers and finding the individual approach to satisfy them.
The consumers’ interests and comfort are taken into consideration when developing new products and introducing new lines of apparel. The customers are seen not only as the source of financial success and the foundation for increasing revenues but also as the inspiration to move forward and improve performance. The company’s philosophy incorporates timing, anticipation, and communication to meet quality requirements.
The primary idea is consumer-centrism, which means that timing should be comfortable for the customers, employees should be communicable and welcoming, so that the customers always want to return to the store, and all the expectation regarding the service of quality are met. The main challenges faced in delivering the services in the language barrier. Because the United Arab Emirates is attractive to tourists, both managers and employees find it necessary to involve either multilingual managers or interpreters to improve the quality of services. Except for this detail, the employees and management are satisfied with the level of service quality.
However, they believe that opening more brand stores across the United Arab Emirates would be beneficial not only for the company itself but also likable by the customers because they would always have their favorite sportswear store close enough. The findings also have shown that males aged 25 to 44 years old are primarily employed by the company. Their occupations are either managers or sales assistant. However, it can be described by the specificity of the sample. Finally, they are satisfied with being employed by Adidas because they see that their work benefits the company, i.e. the level of motivation is high, and makes the customers happy.
Speaking of the customers, the interviews have shown that the customers are not interested in investigating the philosophy of the company. They are interested in being sure that their needs in high-quality products are satisfied and the level of the employees’ communications skills is high. They view the performance of the employees as satisfactory except for the fact of one case of language barriers. However, the employees managed to solve this problem because the manager was multilingual.
The primary finding is that the people want to see more stores across the United Arab Emirates. Except for this detail and coping with the language barrier, no significant improvements were proposed. Customers are satisfied with the timing policy and their expectations are always met. In addition to it, the interviews have shown that the age variety of the customers is wide and there is no particular trend in gender or age. For the most part, people are interested in buying footwear. However, other products are also popular, and they shop at Adidas at least once a month.
Analyzing the Responses
The results of the survey demonstrate that there were a lot of similarities in the responses of both the company’s employees and it customers. This finding might mean that either the sample was too small or the company is successful in following its consumer-centered policy (Ind, Iglesias, & Schultz, 2015). Nevertheless, analyzing the obtained information makes it possible to reach the following conclusion about Adidas: the level of customer satisfaction is high because the timing and communication skills of the employees have received positive feedbacks.
Regardless of the fact that the customers have not heard anything about the philosophy of service quality, they feel that it is well-developed and thoroughly designed because they recognize that the store workers, as well as the company as the whole, focuses on their needs and the employees and designers do their best to meet all expectations. That said, the level of service quality, i.e. the correlation between expectations and performance, is high.
Recommendations
The results of the interviews demonstrate that the level of service quality of Adidas. Nevertheless, there are still some recommendations to enhance the company’s performance in the United Arab Emirates. First of all, because the country is attractive to tourists, the company should make sure that the language barrier is not a significant challenge. This problem can be solved by employing multilingual managers, who know the most widely spoken languages such as English, French, Spanish, and Russian.
Moreover, Adidas should not stop at expanding its influence in the UAE sports market and follow the plan of opening more brand stores, which should be located not only in the shopping malls, but also in separate building. This step might help solve the issue of the requirement to comply with the mall’s timing policy. For example, it might be a profitable idea to open all-day store. Finally, the company should focus on maintaining high levels of employees’ motivation because these are the employees, who build up the successful future and attract customers.
References
Adidas Group with stellar financial performance in Q1 2016. (2016). Web.
Euromonitor International. (2014). ADIDAS Group in Apparel and Footwear (United Arab Emirates). London, UK: Euromonitor International.
Ind, N., Iglesias, O., & Schultz, M. (2015). How Adidas fond its second wind. Web.
Lose control, gain love – speedfactory. (2015). Web.
Myers, M. (2008). Qualitative research in business & management. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.