This Study was conducted to discover the flaws in the Export Strategies of Sports’ Industry of Pakistan – an industry which is earning the huge amount of foreign exchange for Pakistan and recognition of country in World.
Title Page – A Study on Export Strategies of Sports Industry of Pakistan
For the research, a successful sports goods manufacturing & exporting company was selected as a benchmark and its export strategies were studied with the help of five semi-structured questionnaires and personal interview with one of its executive directors. Then, five representative companies were selected from the universe of 841 ISO certified Pakistani companies which were, basically, sports goods & garments manufacturing and exporting companies. The export strategies of all the subject companies were studied and compared with the bench mark in order to explore the most followed strategies. In addition to analysis of the questionnaires & interview with the bench-marked company, two more interviews with Secretary (Pakistan Sports Goods Manufacturers and Exporters Association, Sialkot) and Joint Secretary (Pakistan Readymade Garments Manufacturers & Exporters Association, Sialkot) were secured to have experts’ opinions about the prevailing export marketing situation.
While analysis & comparisons, grave and the worrisome situation came before sight. This export-oriented industry lacked either the capability or the incentive to prepare export marketing plans; the life line of all marketing oriented companies. Whole the emphasis was on the product strategy but not on quality. The industry looks to be struggling, primarily, on the ground of price strategy. Promotion strategy was being, gravely, neglected as more than 80% of the companies were neither having separate advertising departments nor any contacts with any advertising agency with only a few companies had the website. Only 15-20 out of 1200 sports goods, garments, leather products and surgical instruments manufacturing companies were engaged into E-business yet, the most alarming situation was in the area of distribution. The industry waited, helplessly, for the foreign export orders or buys the sub-export orders, discouraging them from adopting aggressive marketing approach. International competitors were trying their best to beat this raw industry by hook and crook. If international competitors in future were successful to control the majority of existing distribution channels of sports industry of Pakistan, whole the industry might have gone to ‘Hell’. The researcher was not worried about the quality or pricing of the product but about the distribution strategies & channels of the sports industry in Pakistan.
So recommendations were made to the industry to devote more resources to the promotion of their products and to establish its own distributions channels, especially in European and North America, in order to have more control on the distribution of their quality products. Otherwise, its international competitors could control whole the market, leaving only local markets for the Pakistani sports industry, despite its best globally – recognized quality and most appropriate prices. China and India, the two close competitors, were already working on the lines.