UNDERSTANDING PARTICIPANTS AS CONSUMERS

1. UNDERSTANDING PARTICIPANTS AS CONSUMERS

2. Why Do We Participate? • Personal Improvement • Better health, sense of accomplishment, develop positive values, etc. • Sport Appreciation • Enjoy the game and competition • Social Facilitation • Spend time with others, feel like part of a group

3. Adult Sport Participant Market:General Observations • Majority of American adults do not participate in many of the most common sports • Numbers conflicting; Surgeon General’s Report (only 15% of adults say that they exercise regularly) • Why?

4. Most Popular Sports

5. Participant Consumption Behavior • Actions performed when searching for, participating in, and evaluating the sports activities that consumers believe will satisfy their needs and desires • Attempts to understand participant consumption behavior focus on: • Why consumers participate in certain sports • What are the benefits • When, where, and how often they participate

6. Sports Participant Behavior a Subset of Consumer Behavior (CB) • What is consumer behavior? • What does the "black box" view of consumers imply? • Why are models of consumer behavior important? • How can a model of consumer behavior be constructed? • What are some examples of models of consumer behavior?

7. Model of Buying Behavior • Marketing factors and other stimuli are inputs into the “buyer’s black box” • Stimuli are evaluated in light of the buyer’s decision process and characteristics • Buyer responses influence choice of the product, brand, vendor, as well as the timing and amount of purchase

8. Stimuli 4P’s Other characteristics economic technological political cultural Stimulus-Response Model of Consumer Behavior • Buyer’s Black Box • Buyer characteristics • Buyer decision process • Buyer Response • Product choice • Brand choice • Dealer choice • Purchase timing • Purchase amount

9. CB Models Simplest CB models have 3 stages: • Prepurchase Need recognition, evaluation • Consumption Purchase, use or experience, disposal • Post-purchase

10. Model of Participant Consumption Behavior

11. Decision-Making Process • Problem Recognition • Information Search • Alternative Evaluation • Participate • Post-Participation Evaluation

12. Types of Participation Decision Processes • Degree of effort or problem solving required for participation/consumption decisions may vary based on familiarity and decision importance. • Habitual problem solving involves routinized or straight rebuy: Requires nearly no effort • Limited problem solving involves evaluating alternatives on a few attributes: Little information search • Extensive problem solving involves evaluating alternatives on more attributes; Meaningful information search

13. Models of Sports Participants' Decision-Making Process • Consumer as Risk Taker • Purchases involve risk • Affected by degrees of uncertainty and the consequences • Consumer as Rational Mathematician • Attributes, weights, and ratings • Compensatory (additive), noncompensatory (multiplicative), lexicographic

14. Are Consumers Rational? • Economists expect consumers will maximize their own utility, but from what do consumers obtain utility? • Examples: Coffee mug and chocolate bar

15. Prospect Theory Indicate your preference of the following option pairs: I. 1a. 100% chance of getting $3000 or 1b. 80% chance of getting $4000 2a. 25% chance of getting $3000 or 2b. 20% chance of getting $4000 II. A. 50% chance of winning $1000 and 50% of getting nothing or B. 100% chance of getting $450

16. Internal (Psychological) Factors • Personality • Motivation (for fulfillment of needs) • Perception • Learning • Beliefs and attitudes • Unique to each person

17. Personality & Self-Concept • Personality: unique psychological characteristics that lead to relatively consistent and lasting responses to one’s environment • Generally defined in terms of traits • Self-concept suggests that people’s possessions contribute to and reflect their identities • Useful for segmentation

18. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs explains why people are driven by needs at particular times Hierarchy implies that lower level needs must be satisfied prior to higher level needs Motives and Needs • A motive (or drive) is a need that is sufficiently pressing to direct the person to seek satisfaction • Can vary across people and cultures

19. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

20. Perception • Process by which people select, organize, and interpret information to form a meaningful picture of the world • Selective attention • Selective distortion • Selective retention

21. Learning • Relatively permanent change in behavior due to experience • Interplay of drives, stimuli, cues, responses, and reinforcement • Drives: Internal stimulus that calls for action • Stimuli: Objects that move drive to motive • Cues: Minor stimuli that affect response • Reinforcement: Feedback on action • Strongly influenced by behavioral consequences (classical and operant conditioning) • Behaviors with satisfying results tend to be repeated • Behaviors with unsatisfying results tend to be avoided

22. Beliefs and Attitudes • Belief • Descriptive thought about a brand or service • May be based on real knowledge, opinion, or faith • Attitude • Describes a person’s evaluations, feelings and tendencies toward an object or idea • Difficult to change

23. Model of Attitude Formation

24. External (Sociological) Factors • Derived from external environments • Culture • Social class • Reference groups

25. Culture • Culture is the most basic cause of a person's wants and behavior • Learned from family, church, school, peers, and colleagues • Reflects basic values, perceptions, wants, and behaviors • Cultural shifts create opportunities for new products or may otherwise influence consumer behavior • Affects socialization, including sports participation

26. Subcultures • Groups of people with shared value systems based on common life experiences • Examples of major subcultures in U.S. • Hispanic consumers • African-American consumers • Asian-American consumers • Mature consumers

27. Social Class • Society’s relatively permanent and ordered divisions whose members share similar values, interests, and behaviors • Measured by a combination of occupation, income, education, wealth, and other variables

28. Reference Groups • Groups: • People who influence the information, attitudes, and behaviors of other group members • Types: • Family • Membership • Reference (Opinion Leaders) • Aspirational • Includes athlete role models

29. Model of Consumer Socialization

30. Situational Factors • Temporary factors in a particular time or place • Physical surroundings • Location, weather, facilities, etc. • Social surroundings • e.g., Who is present?, crowds • Time – constraints and availability • Reason for participation • Antecedent states • Physiological (e.g., energy, aches and pains) • Psychological (e.g., moods)

31. Personal Factors • Age and Life-Cycle Stage • People change things bought during lifetimes • Occupation • Influences purchase of clothing and other goods • Economic Situation • Some goods and services especially income-sensitive

32. Personal Factors (cont.) • Lifestyle • Pattern of living as expressed in psychographics • Activities • Interests • Opinions