The purpose of the study was to discover the flaws in the Export Strategies of Sport Industry in Pakistan. The sports industry is earning the huge amount of foreign exchange for Pakistan. This cottage industry is the sign of recognition of Pakistan in World.
Researcher: Saadat Wahid Research Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Zulfiqar Ali Khan Chairman, Department of Business Education, Institute of Education & Research University of the Punjab, Lahore Pakistan
For the research purposes, a successful sports goods manufacturing & exporting company was selected as bench mark and its export strategies were studied with the help of five semi-structured questionnaires and personal interview with its Director. Then five representative companies were selected from the universe of 841 ISO certified Pakistani companies, which were basically sports goods & garments manufacturing & exporting companies. Their export strategies were studied and compared with the bench mark. In addition to comparison, 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 position.
When comparisons were made to analyze the situation, grave and worrisome situation came before sight. This industry lacked either the capability or the incentive to prepare marketing plans, the life line of all marketing oriented companies. Whole the emphasis was on the product strategy but not on quality. Whole the industry was fighting primarily on the ground of price strategy. Promotion strategy was being neglected as more than 80% of the companies were neither having separate advertising departments nor any contacts with any advertising agency. Only few companies had the web site. Only 15-20 out of 1200 sports goods, garments, leather products and surgical instruments manufacturing companies were engaged into E-business. But, the most alarming situation was in the area of distribution. The industry waits helplessly for the foreign export orders. This practice discourages them to adopt aggressive marketing approach. International competitors are trying their best to beat this industry by hook and crook. If international competitors in future are successful to manage to control the majority of existing distribution channels of sports industry of Pakistan, whole the industry may go to ‘Hell’. Researcher is not worried about the quality or pricing of the product bur about the distribution strategies of 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 EU and N. America, in order to have more control on the distribution of their quality products. Other wise its international competitors may control whole the market leaving only local markets for the Pakistani sports industry, despite its best world known quality and most appropriate prices. China and India are already working on the lines.