Chapter 11 Developing and Managing Products

Jordan Brand has been around now for 27 years. The good thing about the brand is how every year they are constant in producing a new sneaker to its consumer. This all started with the little luck that the company Nike took on Michael Jordan by offering him a contract to his own sneaker line. In chapter 11 it talks about how their are 6 different kinds of New Product lines. The two main lines Jordan brand uses is , addition to existing product lines and new product lines. For example this year Jordan brand introduced the Air Jordan 2012. The sneaker was built to help the performance of a basketball player, the shoe itself comes with 3 different insoles and the ability to take out the strap to make the sneaker a low top or high top shoe, at the consumers use. An example of the company using additional product line is that this may 5th Jordan brand will release a new color way of the Air Jordan 11 model in a low cut form. The launch of this sneaker is bringing a lot of talk on sneaker blogs worldwide on how the consumer is reacting to the shoe. Jordan brand uses Idea Generation when they want ideas for new products. Most of the time they talk to Jordan himself or reps, and in most cases the consumer. A famous sneaker blog called sole collector.com is used by some reps of Jordan brand where they are able to interact with the consumer and see what color ways or designs of sneakers they would like to see. On these blogs the consumer can give its reaction of its shoe and the popularity of the sneaker can rise. Before the release of a sneaker the company does a concept test or a sample where they release a pair and give it to celebrity's or basketball players to try out the shoe and see the feedback it gets from the consumer. Giving the sneaker to a Jordan brand member to play in can also be test marketing because the consumer gives a reaction on how they like the sneaker determine if they will make a purchase or not. A lot of commercialization went into the air Jordan 2012 during the Allstar game. Celebrity like Kevin Hart sported in the sneaker playing good giving him the MVP award of the game.