Background Research

      I wanted to find out if there is an association between the preference of Nike, Under Armour, or Adidas by gender. In order to help me figure this out, I wanted to find out if there was any previous research done on this topic. So I used the search engine Google.com and typed in various deviations of this question but eventually, due to the lack of information, had to use the vague question of, “Who is the best sportswear company.” This lead to numerous irrelevant sites and after sorting through them, this is what I found. The first relevant site that I came to was http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_most_popular_sports_brand and it gave me a list of the top ten most popular sportswear companies. According to this site, they had Nike as the number one most popular sportswear company, Adidas as number two, an irrelevant company as number three, and Under Armour as number four. Surprisingly, there was only one more site that had Under Armour included in there list.

      The next relevant site that I came to was http://www.ehow.com/list_5976199_top-ten-athletic-companies.html and it also gave me a list of the top ten sportswear companies. This site gave the same order with Nike as number, Adidas as number two, and Under Armour as number three. However, this site gave an explanation for why each one was in each place. For Nike it said, “It's no surprise that the top athletic company in the world, let alone the country, is Nike. The brand has been a household name for decades and for good reason. Nike's footwear market share is a whopping 31 percent worldwide.” For Adidas it said,” Adidas is right behind Nike as a worldwide leader in athletic apparel. The company has sponsorship deals with as many as 173 sports programs across the globe.” Finally for Under Armour it said,” Under Armour is the newest company on the list. Founded in 1996, the company became a household name, thanks to testosterone-filled ads that depict various nameless athletes working out and firing up their teammates. Forbes ranks it among the top earners in the country in the athletic apparel field.”

      The next site I found was different from the other two because it allowed people to vote on which one was the best which is what I will be doing. This site was http://en.classora.com/reports/x77213/ranking-of-the-best-sportswear-and-athletic-footwear-brand-names?sort and it only included Nike and Adidas. Nike, again, was number one with Adidas following right up behind it as number two. When I looked at this site, Nike had 580 votes for it and Adidas had 478 votes for it.

      My hypothesis, based on my research, is that Nike will be the most popular among the two genders, with Adidas as number two, and Under Armour as number three, in last.