1. What is the purpose of Puma's content management system?
2. Why did Puma build a single centralized website rather than continue with multiple websites serving different countries and regions?
3. What social media sites does Puma use, and what do they contribute to Puma's marketing effort?
   

82 CHAPTER 1 Introduction to E-commerce 1.9 CASE STUDY Puma Goes Omni W hen Puma, one of the world's top sports footwear, apparel, and acces- sories brands, conceived its Love=Football campaign, the goal was to create a memorable tagline in a language that would be understood the world over-pictures. In the process, the company stumbled upon the power of social marketing. Puma's ad agency, Droga5, filmed a light-hearted commercial featuring scruffy everyday men in a Tottenham pub singing love songs to their Valentines. The video went viral, garnering more than 130 million impressions and spawning hundreds of homemade response videos. Today, Puma's marketing campaigns are branded with the slogan "Forever Faster," which, according to Ruth How, Puma's Head of Marketing and Communications at Puma UK, Ireland & Benelux, is a sentiment that applies not only to its marketing message to consumers but also to Puma's approach to marketing itself. As How notes, since so much of Puma's target market lives and breathes in the digital space, it is imperative for Puma to fuse marketing with technology to reach those consumers. PUMA @Rene van den Berg/Alamy Stock PhotoCase Study 33 Puma maintains an extensive presence on Facebook. Twitter. Instagram, Pinterest. Snapchat, and 'rouTube and closely integrates its social strategy with its other marketing channels to deepen its engagement with consumers. it uses social media ' part to better midetstand the different regional and subbrand audiences within the .120 Cuntes in which it operates. Not all content is suitable for every one of its over 20 million global 5 Facebook tans. Dedicated sport. country. region. and product category pages were created ' fdr each social network. For several years. Puma took a trialvanderror approach. focusing on building its follower base. Today. Puma uses a data-driven approach, geotargeting posts tailored to specific social network audiences at the appropriate times oi the dayr to maximize tan engagement and generate the right mix or online content to best drive sales. The company also sends personalized messages based on customers\" website activity. using items abandoned in shopping carts and other information to generate customized messages and surveys. This integration of channels into a cohesive customer acquisition strategy is in fact a key element of the emerging world of omnichannel retailing. The advent of the term "omnichannel\" signals the evolution of muttichannel or cross- channel retailing to encompass all digital and social technologies. The idea is that customers can examine. access. purchase. and return goods trom any channel. even change channels during the process. and receive timely and relevant product information at each step along the way and in each channel. The rise of social networks and the personalized retail it engenders is a primary driver of omnichanneluthe oom piete integration of the shopping and brand experience. Marketing eitorts combine ofine events. sales and online promotions and brand building across all available channels. For a company like Puma, with ecom nrerce sites in the United States. Russia. Canada, China. India, Malaysia Switzerland. Germany, France. the Llnited Kingdom. and a European site that serves multiple countries in multiple languages. this presents quite a challenge. To meet that challenge, Puma. aided by Astound Commerce. a leading e-corrrmerce consultancy firm, undertook a complete restructuring of its ecornmerce business. Cine hundred team members working on the project for nine months completed the restmctur- ing. which included coordinating warehouses. PayPal. and credit card companies with all of Puma's different localized sites. Puma felt it needed to shake things up to compete with Adidas, Nike. and other sports apparel companies in a global market that was rapidly sh ifting away from mature Western markets and desktop commerce. To coordinate market rollouts and ensure a unied brand image. a command center took over brand strategy and investment decisions, leaving daily operational and locality-based decisionmaking to the regional teams. Cine central website. powered by Salesioroe Commerce Cloud. Puma's main ecom merce plationn', was used to simplify ma naging global e-commeroe operations from a central digital plat-Form. and the company now uses informatics database technol ogy to manage its 2o.ooo products centrally. reducing costs and streamlining inventory management. Puma also began to use the AutoStore inventory automation system in some of its warehouses. The system uses a series of bins and robotic handlers to improve storage density. energy efficiency. and the capability to ship items sameday to customers. Puma's goal was to overhaul its ecommerce operations from the ground up to ensure that all of its teams were on the same page and that it was using top-end technology in every area to \"an\"... ll-n tn. "drum. 84 CHAPTER 1 Introduction to E - commerce SOURCES: "Reinventing the Puma assigned the overhaul of its websites to Viget, a web design firm. It created tem- Customer Experience for a Legacy plates to unite several Puma sites into one and unify the look across numerous categories Brand, " Astoundcommerce.com, accessed December 2019, "Puma's and content types. Puma also modeled its physical stores after the design updates made to New Flagship Brings Products to its websites, laying out items in similar arrangements. A dozen category sites now comple- Life with Digitization, " by Dan Berthianume, September 3, 2019; ment Puma.com, with a custom-built content management system (CMS) ensuring that "Puma Launches Own E-commerce consistent Puma branding and navigation are maintained across all sub-sites and pages. Platform, " Focusmalaysia.com, April 22, 2019; "Puma Delivers Category managers can customize home pages outside of the template layout. The flexibility Strong Growth in Sales and to roll out local, regional, and global campaigns is thus built into the website design. What's Profitability in 2018, " About.puma. com, February 14, 2019 "Puma more, the CMS integrates with a language translation tool, a Storefinder tool that helps Leverages the Power of Salesforce visitors locate Puma stores, and Puma's product inventory manager. These design changes to Relaunch Its Mobile Sites and Speed Past Customer Expecta- improved site visualization and navigation, prompting customers to spend twice as much tions, " Salesforce.com, accessed time on the site and raising the order rate. Other features like the ability to design Purna January 2019; "Puma, Nike Top List of Most-mentioned Brands on shoes from the ground up using a built-in web app across all of its sites have made Puma's Instagram," by Robert Williams, online presence even more compelling. Mobilemarketer.com, December 21. 2018; "Puma Set to Dethrone Nike Puma then turned to the mobile platform, first incorporating Storefinder into its mobile in NBA & Culture Push, " by Kori site interface. Using the GPS capability of the mobile device, Puma stores nearest to the Hale, Forbes. com, December 20, 2018: "Selena Gomez Resurfaces user can be located along with address and contact information. Puma's mobile sites were on Social Media, Teases New rebuilt using responsive design features, enabling users to experience the same content and Collaboration with Puma," by Monica R. Lopez, Sunstarcom, appearance as on a desktop or laptop, managed by the same CMS. Puma also incorporated November 28, 2018: "Purna Is mobile into its omni-channel marketing strategy. In fact, whereas most mobile sites are Rare Brand to Take True Mobile- First Approach to E-commerce." by scaled down from the desktop version, Puma's sites are the opposite-the desktop site is Lisa Lee, Salesforce.com, June 7 an enlarged version of the mobile site, which has all the functionality of a typical desktop 2018; "Purna Marketer on Why Retail Is Still a Priority, Despite site, including speed. Puma also developed PUMATRAC, a mobile app that automatically Massive E-commerce Push," by analyzes environmental conditions to give runners feedback on how these variables impact Vivienne Tay, Marketing-Interactive. com, June 13, 2018; "Puma Sees their performance. The app offers multiple options to share statistics and routes with other India in Top 5 in 3 Years, " by John runners. Puma has since overhauled its mobile sites in 24 separate markets, customizing Sarkar and Digbijay Mishral Timesofindia.indiatimes.com, features for each one, ensuring that mobile customers can access items they place in their September 8, 2017: "Sports Brand shopping cart on other platforms, and allowing its web and mobile sites to load 69% faster PUMA Europe to Engage Consumers at a Personal Level " by than previous iterations. Puma's mobile traffic accounts for 70% of all site traffic in many Paul Skeldon, Internetretailing.net, markets, and all of Puma's sites can now handle large traffic spikes when new products hit September 5, 2017; "Puma's Online Business Grows 15 Times in the market. Overall, Puma has seen its mobile conversion rates improve from less than 1% the Last 5 Years, " by Sneha Jha, to approximately 1.5%; though this sounds modest, the increase has resulted in a significant Economictimes.indiatimes.com August 30, 2017; "Puma Goes increase in sales and profits for the company. Even More Mobile with Its New In addition to focusing on unifying its branding efforts and e-commerce websites, Puma Online Store." Puma-catchup.com, August 18, 2017; "Puma's has also streamlined its e-commerce teams. In the past, Puma maintained nine independent Data-Driven Digital Transformation e-commerce teams on five continents. Currently, it has teams divided into the three major with Informatica, * by Antonia Renner, Blogs.informatica.com. segments that comprise the majority of its sales-North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific- May 31, 2017; "Puma Autostore," as well as a global unit that operates at a level above these regional segments. At the same Autostoresystem.com/Cases/Puma, 2017; "Purna Overhauls Site, time, the company is also pursuing a strategy that is flexible and focused on the precise local Breaks All Records, " Demandware. needs in individual markets, despite reducing the number of individual e-commerce teams. com, November 2016: "What Puma Is Doing Right in Asia, * by For example, Puma found that in the Asia-Pacific region, traditional paid media advertising Byravee lyer, Campaignasia.com, was very ineffective compared to social marketing, particularly social media ads featuring October 12, 2016; "Puma Person- alizes Targeted Messages Based on compelling influencers like Selena Gomez, whom the company partnered with in 2018, and 2018 World Cup stars like Romelu Lukaku.Case Study 85 Over the past several years, Puma has gained invaluable omni-channel experience Site Visits, Cart Abandonment," by and laid the groundwork for resurgent success. In 2019, Puma opened its first-ever North Laurie Sullivan, Mediapost.com, June 15, 2016; "Which Sneaker American flagship store in New York City. The digital-centric store is intensely focused on de- Brand Wins the E-commerce Foot livering an innovative, interactive, and personalized customer experience using augmented Race?" by Zach Blatt, Internetre- taller.com, May 17, 2016; "How reality and Internet of Things technologies. Puma Is Turning to Startups to Puma's ability to adapt its strategy to individual areas has also helped the company Become "the Fastest Sports Brand in the World'," by Natalie advance into India, where it was given the right to sell to customers directly as well as via Mortimer, Thedrum.com, March 29, popular e-commerce portal Flipkart, and China, a growing market where Puma has tradition- 2016: "Puma and Adidas to Start Their Own E-commerce Portals in ally had minimal presence. Puma believes that India will become one of the company's top India, " Businessinsider.in, March 7, five markets in the near future. Puma entered the market for NBA player endorsements in 2016; "Inside Puma's Branded 2018, both because the NBA culture meshes well with Puma's and because the NBA is Content Strategy," by Lucia Moses, Digiday.com, December 15, 2014: extremely popular in China. Many top young NBA players inked agreements to wear Puma "Puma Understands the Impor- lance of Local Needs in a Global footwear during games in 2019 and beyond. E-commerce Rollout," by Derek Du Implementing a successful omni-channel strategy is a monumental task. Puma's for- Preez, Diginomica.com, June 24, 2014; "How Puma Is Improving tunes did not improve overnight. Puma CEO Bjorn Gulden believes that 2015 represented a Sales Operations Through turning point for the Puma brand back to profitability. By 2018, Puma's e-commerce sales E-commerce," by Paul Demery. nternetretailer.com, May 20, 2014; had risen to more than 15 times what they had been in 2012. The company's stock price "Puma's Unified Approach to has more than tripled over the past three years, and its sales have continued to grow across Global E-commerce," Ecommerce- facts.com, August 5, 2013, all of its segments, leading to sales growth of over 17% and a significant gain in net earnings "Puma's Head of E-Commerce: from E136 million in 2017 to $188 million in 2018. The company's credits its e-commerce Changes and Challenges of Customization in the Apparel strategy as the main driver of its turnaround and continued success. Industry," Masscustomization,de, July 16, 2013; "Puma: Challenges in an Omni-channel World," Case Study Questions Embodee.com, May 3, 2013. 1. What is the purpose of Puma's content management system? 2. Why did Puma build a single centralized website rather than continue with mul- tiple websites serving different countries and regions? 3. What social media sites does Puma use, and what do they contribute to Puma's marketing effort