UNDERSTANDING
PARTICIPANTS AS
CONSUMERS
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
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?
Most Popular Sports
80
Walking
Camping
51
49
47
Ex w Equip
Swimming
Millions of
People
Participating at
least once a year
38
36
36
31
28
26
Bowling
Fishing
Biking
Billiards
Aerobic Ex
Basketball
0
20
40
60
80
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
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?
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
Stimulus-Response Model of
Consumer Behavior
• Stimuli
• 4P’s
• Other characteristics
• economic
• technological
• political
• cultural
•Buyer’s Black Box
•Buyer Response
•Buyer characteristics
•Buyer decision process
•Product choice
•Brand choice
•Dealer choice
•Purchase timing
•Purchase amount
CB Models
Simplest CB models have 3 stages:
1. Prepurchase
Need recognition, evaluation
2. Consumption
Purchase, use or experience, disposal
3. Post-purchase
Model of Participant Consumption
Behavior
Decision-Making Process
• Problem Recognition
• Information Search
• Alternative Evaluation
• Participate
• Post-Participation Evaluation
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
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
Are Consumers Rational?
• Economists expect consumers will
maximize their own utility, but from what
do consumers obtain utility?
– Examples:
Coffee mug and chocolate bar
Prospect Theory
Indicate your preference of the following option pairs:
I. 1a.
1b.
100% chance of getting $3000
80% chance of getting $4000
or
2a.
2b.
25% chance of getting $3000
20% chance of getting $4000
or
II. A. 50% chance of winning $1000 and
50% of getting nothing
B. 100% chance of getting $450
or
Internal (Psychological) Factors
• Personality
• Motivation (for fulfillment of needs)
• Perception
• Learning
• Beliefs and attitudes
• Unique to each person
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
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
• 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
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Perception
• Process by which people select, organize,
and interpret information to form a
meaningful picture of the world
– Selective attention
– Selective distortion
– Selective retention
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
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
Model of Attitude Formation
External (Sociological) Factors
• Derived from external environments
• Culture
• Social class
• Reference groups
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
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
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
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
Model of Consumer
Socialization
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)
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 incomesensitive
Personal Factors (cont.)
• Lifestyle
– Pattern of living as expressed in psychographics
• Activities
• Interests
• Opinions