Sport Consumer Behaviour: An Overview

Sport Consumer Behaviour Introduction

• Introduction to sport consumer behaviour in February 2025

Learning Outcomes

• Define the concept of sport experience design
• Define sport consumer behaviour
• Discuss the sport consumer behaviour decision-making model
• Describe sport marketing actions
• Explain sport experience interactions

Introduction

• A fundamental purpose of a sport business is to offer value to customers while being socially responsible
• This value proposition is designed to satisfy customer needs by creating and managing a sport product in physical and virtual environments
• The sport product represents any product, good, service, or experience
• The focus is on the consumer perspective to examine personal, psychological, social, and contextual factors that influence sport consumer behaviour
• Understanding these factors provides insight into how consumers live, make decisions, and use sports products
• A beneficial approach to understanding consumption is to examine how and why consumers spend time and money on sport products
• Qualities of expected utility include: how useful a sport product is and how much satisfaction it brings
• Sport consumption can be experiential, subjective; Create emotion, drama, passion; Have multiple interactions over time, and possess an element of uncertainty

The Rational Sport Commerce

• According to the microeconomic theory consumers will make rational decisions on what sport products they consume
• Consumers know what they want, are committed to obtaining it, and trust the business that produces the product
• Consumers' decisions are influenced by biases, inconsistent attitudes, situational experiences, and social-cultural forces
• The way information, stimuli, and experiences are interpreted and evaluated by consumers can produce irrational decisions when investing in sport products

Sport Consumer Biases in Decision-Making

• Cognitive biases are unconscious errors that occur when processing information due to problems related to memory, attention, and mental mistakes, which affect decisions and judgements
• Bias can account for why sport consumers may not behave in a logical manner or make decisions in their best interest
• The Psychology of Persuasion (2021), suggests numerous cognitive biases uncovered within behavioural economics can be understood and managed by learning seven fundamental principles
• Liking - consumers like to be liked and can be persuaded by someone they like to purchase or use a sport product more than someone they dislike
• Social proof - consumers tend to buy sport products they observe others using as a signal that it is a correct attitude or behaviour, which has become more pronounced with the popularity of social media and reviews
• Reciprocity – consumers are more likely to buy a sport product if they are given something for free or the sport businesses help them out initially
• Authority – consumers tend to believe opinions, recommendations, and testimonials from perceived experts as more legitimate when deciding to buy or use a sport product
• Scarcity - consumers are more likely to value a sport product that is in short supply or is being offered for a limited time to avoid the fear of missing out (FOMO)
• Commitment and consistency – consumers are more likely to continue buying and using a sport product if they have voluntarily or publicly committed to the behaviour to be seen as consistent by others
• Unity - consumers tend to desire a sense of belonging to a group that allows them to be part of something bigger than themselves and buying and using sport products can facilitate these group relationships
• These principles of persuasion can be used by sport marketers to take advantage of biases and influence consumers to take a course of action or respond to a request
• They are particularly useful for developing marketing and communication strategies to create sales and engagement opportunities for sport businesses

Sport Consumer Background

• Consumer behaviour research is primarily concerned with investigating how individual and environmental factors influence decision-making to explain or predict behavioural patterns
• Sport consumer behaviour is largely based on social psychology to determine why individuals search for, select, and use sport products
• This knowledge on buying behaviour has allowed sport managers to examine trends and make predictions on what motivates consumers to initially choose a sport product and related brand

Sport Consumer Defined

• Sport consumer behaviour is the study of consumption to understand consumer actions and processes used to make purchase decisions, to use and evaluate products, and to dispose of them
• It is important to understand sport consumption in terms of purpose, intention, and meaning
• Purpose is the reason why consumers buy and use sport products
• Intention is determining how sport products will be bought and used by consumers
• Meaning is what buying and using sport products convey about consumers to others
• Sport consumer behaviour is defined as the cognitive and behavioural responses that occur before, during and after buying and using a sport product
• Cognitive responses include mental processes related to information processing, perception, emotion, learning, beliefs, problem-solving, knowledge construction, reasoning, and evaluation
• Behavioral responses are the physical tasks required to purchase or use the sport product which can range from complex to simple, habitual to irregular, voluntary to involuntary, and conscious to unconscious
• Consumers will seek out and use sport products to solve' a problem and/or acquire desirable benefits that satisfy needs and wants

Sport Experience Design

• Is based on how various physical and virtual design-relevant factors influence cognitive and behavioural responses and enhance consumer satisfaction
• Based on the notion that two entities are trying to achieve a purpose
• The sport business wants to develop and sell a product and the consumer wants to purchase and use a product
• The sport context is any human or technological made environment (physical or virtual) created and managed by the sport organisation through which the consumer navigates to purchase and use the product
• SX helps managers identify and evaluate various user-organisation-context interactions
• Six factors consider when designing physical and virtual experiences – sport context are: Accessibility, Usefulness, Task definition, Social surroundings, Temporal pressure, and Antecedent
• Accessibility considers how existing and potential consumers can use the sport product independently
• Usefulness considers how the sport product provides utility and usability to achieve a specific goal
• Task definition considers how easily and quickly can the consumer use the sport product to accomplish a task
• Social surroundings considers how are consumers influenced by social interactions that occur when using the sport product
• Temporal pressure considers how are consumers impacted by time constraints when using the sport product
• Antecedent state considers how does a consumer's prior mood influence the use of the sport product
• The six sport context factors are helpful to remind managers that not all consumers purchase and use the sport product the same way or for the same reason

Sport Product Interactions

• There are numerous user-organisation-context interactions that occur in physical and virtual situations
• For example, a spectator attending a live sporting event include: purchasing a ticket online, using a website to follow news about the team and players, travelling to the game, parking, participating in pre, during and post-game activities and rituals, passing through security and finding a seat, using an app to purchase concessions, visiting the food court, posting on social media, using a mobile device, listening to music, viewing signage and large-screen video displays, participating in sponsor promotions and using the restroom and returning home
• The consumer interacts with design-relevant factors such as the team's website, stadium facilities, venue employees and volunteers, corporate promotions, and other spectators

Sport Consumer Experience Blueprint

• The experience blueprint represents a diagram of touchpoints encountered by consumers
• Often these touchpoints are arranged in a chronological sequence related to interactions that occur before, during, and after buying and using a sport product
• The blueprint is typically simplified by identifying key touchpoints that all consumers encounter or ones for a specific target segment (e.g., first-time female participants between ages of 18 and 30)

Sport Consumer Behaviour Model

• illustrates how the sport consumer is influenced by personal, psychological, social, and contextual factors within the sport consumer marketplace and steps of the decision-making process
• Personal and psychological factors reflect individual differences, whereas social and contextual factors reflect environmental conditions
• Personal factors are individual characteristics that influence sport consumption, such as gender, race, education, income, health, lifestyle, life stage, and knowledge
• Psychological factors are cognitive processes that influence sport consumption, such as motivation, perceptions, learning, attitudes, constraints, personality, and identity
• Social factors are external conditions that shape shared knowledge, customs, and group beliefs about sport consumption, such as culture, sub-culture, family, social class, and reference groups
• Contextual factors are physical and virtual conditions designed and encountered by the consumer in a specific sport consumption situation (e.g., sport context in the SX) including buying and using tasks as well as marketing activities used by sport businesses
• The influence of these four factors on sport consumption is often observed when disruptions occur within an industry sector or shifting social-cultural trends emerge
• The 4 factors are unique and interrelated and also jointly affect the consumer decision-making process.

Decision-Making Process

• The first step begins when the consumer recognises a problem or desire exists based on a perception that a current condition is different from a preferred condition creating a psychological state of imbalance
• The second step involves gathering and processing information on various shoe brands that could satisfy the problem or desire from internal and external sources
• Internal information search consists of awareness and knowledge of running shoe brands based on past usage, experiences, and memory
• External information search consists of personal, commercial, and public resources such as online and offline sources, search engines, product and consumer reviews, social media, asking friends and work colleagues for recommendations
• To identify and evaluate various shoe brands to reduce the number of potential options to a smaller subset of brands called the consideration set
• After making the decision based on decision-making strategies
• Use and evaluation takes place - after taking possession of the new shoes and running in them, the consumer evaluates how useful they were and how much satisfaction they brought