Décathlon an example of segmented marketing

Résumé du document

In 1976, Michel Leclercq created Decathlon. The first supermarket, which sold sports articles, opened in Englos, near Lille. It was a new concept in France: equipping every sportsman from amateurs to professionals at the best prices.

In 1986, "Decathlon Production" is born. His mission is assuring the conception and the fabrication of articles under its brand. The firm asserts by this choice its will not to be only a Distributor of sports articles. Decathlon starts to get international in Spain, Germany, United-Kingdom, Netherlands, Portugal and Asia.

1986 is a major stage for Decathlon, by launching itself in sports articles production Decathlon opens itself in a new market and diversifies downstream. It is a strategic choice faced with the competitiveness but it is also a marketing choice.

Indeed, Decathlon is situated on the same "DAS" as companies like GO SPORT, INTERSPORT, SPORT 2000 and the independent generalists it is to say offering a multi sport offer.

Extraits

[...] First “passion brand” developed by decathlon, it's the brand of ball games (tennis, badminton and golf). This passion brand is very popular but seems to still be linked with an idea of “cheap product” maybe because at the beginning of the Inesis adventure the R&D was low and the strategies wasn't yet innovation but was only following the leaders The brand suffers this lake of proper identity and the marketing project on Inesis has cancelled the ambition to change this image and prefers to work and invest more R&D on others passion brands. [...]

[...] It's interesting to highlight the fact that the segmentation of “passion brands” is never finished and the segmentation is always more accurate. For example the new passion brand Fouganza, little sister or Geologic is dedicated to horse riding sees a key moment for Decathlon Cycle. By changing its name in the same year as it celebrates its 20th birthday, the brand will now have the means to reach its ambitions: renamed b'Twin - after the bike created by in house experts in 2000 - the brand is innovating again. Its aim: to become the favorite brand in the bike sports market. [...]

[...] In Decathlon's case at the beginning people chose this brand because they were attracted by the good ratio quality/price. The price is very influent on the consumer behaviour so as Decathlon offered good quality products for a reduced price the consumers were bound to buy Decathlon's products. Then in 1996 when Decathlon created the seven Passion brands the consumers behaviour changed, as they were yet attached to the brand Decathlon they followed it with the seven Passion brands. With the seven Passion brands Decathlon changed strategy towards the consumers, nowadays people buy the products they need in Decathlon because the Passion brands as Tribord represent their passion. [...]

[...] At the beginning of 2000,many new designers arrived to conciliate performance and design. In what concerns attraction, a new publicity strategy was reflected especially by Young and Rubicam. The goal to reach consisted in giving credibility to Quechua's expertise by promising newness to people to create pride to wear its clothes. Quechua's marketing As a brand tries to interest a so eclectic type of consumers from beginners to high-level athletes, through so many different types of sports, the ideal would be that we develop a one-to-one marketing strategy; but for that, we need to dispose of an important budget, what Quechua had not ;The marketing budget was about euros, a real tiny budget in comparison with the concurrence. [...]

[...] In relation to the objectives It consists in developing the position of the enterprise face to the values and objectives of the consumers. The Decathlon's consumer thinks that Decathlon is a dynamic enterprise. When he comes into a Decathlon store, he is waiting for advices concerning the products. He can find a good relation between the price and the quality and gets the possibility to access easily to different sport. By this way, the consumer knows that he can change of sport and equipment quickly and without spending too much money. [...]