SGMA Supports Converting 'Tryers' Into 'Buyers'
Date: 6/17/09
JUPITER, FLORIDA – June 17, 2009 – Every year, new people take up a new sport or activity. They come aboard with great intentions and great expectations, but often something happens along the way which negatively impacts their participation. People lose interest or something changes in their life and they don’t stay with it. For sporting goods manufacturers, this is an opportunity lost because, for one reason or another, the chance to convert someone from a ‘tryer’ to a ‘buyer’ is gone.
SGMA’s Sports & Fitness Participation Study (2009 edition) provides some great insight into this phenomenon. By looking at the percentage of casual participants in a specific sport versus the ‘core’ and ‘regular’ participants, SGMA Research can draw some assumptions about the people that just take up a specific sport or just participate on an ‘infrequent’ basis.
Activity | Casual Participation | Regular Participation |
Walking on Treadmill | 1.80% |
-3.50% |
Running | 5.40% | 2.30% |
Baseball | 8.00% | -12.90% |
Basketball | 7.90% | -6.60% |
Paintball | -8.30% | 6.80% |
Slow Pitch Softball | 15.10% | -0.08% |
Biking (Paved Road) | 2.10% | -2.50% |
Camping in RV | 1.00% | 14.60% |
Jet Ski | 4.40% | -14.80% |
If you look more closely at some of the specific sports, you can draw some interesting conclusions. As an extreme example, many more people went jet skiing last year for the first time or maybe drove a jet ski while on their annual vacation. However, when you look at ‘regular’ jet ski users, the level of participation drops considerably. Consequently, one of the conclusions that you can draw is that you can get people to try a jet ski, but it is considerably more challenging to keep them involved or to get them to purchase one.
- Annual Sports & Fitness Participation Study
- Individual Sport Reports
- State of the Industry Report
- Industry Shipments Report