Nike and their cheap, overpriced products. Hope Zion and Duke dump them.
- Thread starter psycock
- Start date
Have you seen the Zack Morris is Trash episodes? Highly recommend.
Nike reported that they fired the 8 year old Chinese worker making 50 cent a day that was responsible for this shoe. That Sweat shop is really under scrutiny from the higher ups.
I won't call myself a true Nike Hater...but I don't much care for them. But as to your question: Why?
I teach middle school and watch daily as countless students worry about their Jordans, KDs, or some other Nike shoe that marketing has told them they have to wear to be cool. No problem so far...but: so many of these shoes are in the $80-$140 range (which, frankly, for most of my students is out of their parents price range), but parents short cut other areas and buy these shoes.
Now, to my real problem. Nike spent nearly $1 billion last year on endorsements. These are the athletes that convince these kids that they HAVE to have these shoes. I'm too lazy to to the research/math on it again, but if I remember correctly from having a class do this once a few years ago, the average cost of a pair of Nikes is about 35% endorsements. Yes, companies have to cover the cost of their advertising, but if they weren't so cavalier about throwing around $40 to $100 million shoe contracts, their shoes would maybe be priced in a range that is more reasonable for these impressionable kids.
I can kind of see this... So your take is that their ad campaigns are more or less predatory because they're using athletes, who naturally will appeal to kids, to sell the shoes? And by using these athletes, they're also driving up the cost of the shoe due to the massive cost of the sponsorship and making the shoes unaffordable for those very kids they're appealing to?
I agree with this to an extent. But at the end of the day, every corporation is greedy and has very little regard for anyone besides their shareholders. Their interest in the consumer is only to get them to buy their products.
I guess I'm just confused on the hate for Nike, when you could find hundreds of examples of corporations who are greedy, make inferior/dangerous products, and have little regard for their customers aside from trying to convince them to buy their products. I know Nike is a major presence, especially in the sports world that most of us reside in, but they seem to get a lot of heat.
