Under Amour: Where do we go from here?

Under Amour began with differentiated marketing, using this strategy to target the male football player. Though Under Amour did not solely focus on production and marketing of men’s football gear with the offering of other products but limited to the female shopper. This all changed in 2013 when the “I Will What I Want” campaign was launched. Under Amour now aiming to capture the women in the athletic world switched gears to niche segmentation.

When implementing segmentation strategies, the main key points are:

·      Demographic: this allows you to decide; age, gender, income, education, occupation, social class, marital status, family life cycle, culture or ethnicity.

·      Geographic: providing you the knowledge of population density, region, climate. This will help reach hot or cold climates depending on the type of gear needed market.  

·      Psychographic and Lifestyles: Identifies the common interests, activities and ideals of the target market.

·      Behavioral Base: Helps determine attributes, occasion, and product usage.   

A new niche market that I see coming around is “strong is the new beautiful.” Many women are trading in their skinny for muscle. Unfortunately, our fashion designers haven’t caught up with this trend. Many women I know are have begun to put muscle on their frames, and believe it or not finding clothes to accommodate these builds is hard. Legs may be bigger than the average skinny size two but the seat of your pants might be too large and create a baggy effect. So now you have tight jeans in the leg but your booty sags. Currently, many of these women just resort to leggings, but sometimes a girl wants a cute pair of jeans. To reach this market, using niche market segmentation would be beneficial. Not every woman is choosing to trade her thin in. These women need to be reached by strong women with mass followings on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Pintrest. Targeting the followers of these women. I know as a woman, who runs, and lifts I would appreciate more options to better suite my desires.