Who are College Sport Fans?

I know I have talked about marketing segmentation in a previous blog, but my interest in this has increased throughout this class as well as my marketing 409 class. In this blog I will dig deeper into the bases of Marketing Segmentation. I will identify the meaning of segmentation, the purpose of segmentation, and the demographic statistics for marketing segmentation in college sports.

Market segmentation, as defined in class is dividing large groups of consumers into smaller groups based on similar wants and needs. After dividing consumers into groups, you can develop a marketing mix for this specific group. The purpose of segmenting is specialization, concentrating on specific customer needs, and developing promotions for specific groups of people. Market segments are created by dividing groups based on four factors: demographics, psychographics, behavior, and a hybrid segment. Each is truly important in developing the right marketing mix for the right group of consumers. The one I will focus on is demographics. “Demographics are data used to refer to selected population characteristics, used by the government, in marketing, and in opinion research” (this definition is from getbrandwise.com). There are many different aspects when talking about demographics in marketing segmentation. These aspects include age, gender, ethnicity, income, family life cycle, and geographic locations. 

For this particular blog I did some research on the demographic characteristics of college sports fans. Most of the information I am going to present came from the Learfield Sports website.  The age demographics for college sports had little variation; in fact the range had a difference of only 8%. The highest category was from ages 45-54 at 20%. Ages 18-24 was the group with the lowest amount of fans of college sports, at 12%. This number is very shocking to me. I figured that this category would be the highest due to the fact that these are the ages you attend college, and have an allegiance toward a specific university.  I would think many universities also sell discounted students tickets, which should increase the amount of fans at this level.  Gender, another aspect of demographics, is also important when looking to segment the market. Males make up 60% of college sports fans, while females make up 40%. These numbers are expected and are not very surprising when looking at the gender of college sports fans. I think that male fan numbers are so high due to the competitive nature of males as well as the greater number of males in collegiate athletics.  Ethnicity also had an interesting breakdown in percentages of people who are fans. The highest group, at 80%, was whites and the lowest group was Asian fans, at 3%. Only 13% of African Americans are fans of college sport. 13% seems kind of low to me due to the fact that a majority of athletes playing sports at the collegiate level are African Americans. The fourth aspect of demographics is income. Most fans of college sports are in the range of people who make 0-49 thousand dollars annually. The next highest percentage of fans is people who make 100 thousand or more. The two lowest categories were the ones that I would have thought would have been the highest. The people with the least amount of time and money have the biggest percentage of fans of collegiate sports. Family life cycle is another basis for looking at demographics. There were two different statistics for family life cycle, if you were married and were a fan and how many children you had. 59% of college sport fans are married. I think this statistic could be skewed and a little confusing. It is not clear if they are currently or were married at one time. Another aspect that needs to be looked at is what percent of Americans are married. The only statistic I could find on this was from the year 2000, when 57% of Americans were married. For parents with children, 30% of fans have one to two children where only 8% have 3 or more children. This I would think is mainly due to the amount of extra time parents have. If they have more children they have less time to pay attention to sports, and if they have less children they have more time for sports. The last aspect of demographics is geographic location. I could not find accurate data for this aspect. The best data I could find was on fans of just college football. The data gathered showed that most football fans were in the West and Midwest, both at 57%. I think this data looks odd in the first place because I find football to be much bigger in the south, than anywhere else. If you added all sports into the equation, I think you would find a greater shift of fans in the East due to the number of basketball schools along the east coast.

Demographics are just one way to determine how to segment the market. It is important to look at all the aspects and characteristics of market segmentation. Taking all factors into consideration helps you develop the best possible marketing strategies and mixes to reach the needs of all consumers.

Brand Extensions

After listening to Zack Damon give his lecture on branding I became more intrigued in the topics he discussed. One topic I ran across while studying the lecture later on, was the topic of brand extension. We had not gone into much depth talking about brand extension but I was interested in finding out more. When doing a little research on brand extension I found a lot more information, including definitions, different types of brand extension, and some examples of some of the most successful brand extensions and some of the worst.

Brand extension is using a well-known brand name and creating another product line to put on the market.  However I found a better definition of this on brandextension.org. It said that it is using a brand name as a means of leverage and creating a product that is in a different market from the previous product. As I gathered more information I found eight different types of brand extensions. Some of them included creating a similar product to the parent product, giving the new product a distinctive flavor, using certain expertise, companion products, vertical extensions, or using a brand with a designer image to promote a different type of product.  My favorite type is the designer image style. An example of this is the famous clothing brand Tommy Bahama, introducing luxury furniture using the same brand name.  For any type of brand extension to be successful it must have two key elements. These elements are product fit and leverage.  Product fit is what kind of products consumers will accept into the market from a certain brand. Leverage is a little simpler in that it comes with the already well-known brand name. It is what the company does well and what it is known for, also known as a competitive advantage.

With brand extensions there have been some notable bests and worsts. These have come from Time Magazine and have been voted on by consumers. The tenth best product extension was Planters Peanuts finally creating their own peanut butter. Planters Company is currently 108 years old and did not come up with this idea for peanut butter until 2011. What could have taken them so long? Maybe it was due to the fact of the great brands like Peter Pan. The rise in the Nutella hazelnut spread also could have been a factor in the decision to wait on making this peanut butter. The next one is a more difficult brand extension because I find the products to be more unrelated. The number seven best brand extension is considered to be Rolls Royce extending their name. They went from some of the most luxurious cars to building airplane engines. I would consider this to be another example of a designer image type of brand extension. When seeing this I found it a little strange that Rolls Royce would build airplane engines, but if I were in the market I would see these as probably some of the most reliable engines out there. The only downfall for Rolls Royce though is the price at which they might have to charge for their product. If you were Rolls Royce you might have the most reliable airplane engine but it would also be the priciest one. The most intriguing and unrelated product by far is the brand extension of Virgin Records. Virgin Records decided that it would extend its brand name and create Virgin Atlantic Airways, an Airplane company. This seems like a pretty bold move to me, going from records to airplanes to mobile phones. These great risks by Richard Branson have made him one of the richest men in the world.

One of the worst brand extensions has also come from Virgin. After the success of all the other brand extensions, I guess Richard Branson wasn’t quite satisfied, so he created the Virgin water purifier. I don’t understand how Virgin comes up with all these different products and thinks they will be profitable. In the case of the airplane and mobile phone service they proved me wrong, but not in the case of the water purifier. I guess it is all about high risk and high reward.  Another one of the worst brand extensions was from Paula Deen.  After cooking for many years Paula Deen decided to extend her brand creating kids furniture.  The furniture ranged from 550 to 1500 dollars. I do not like this brand extension mainly because of the price. I would not want to spend 550 t0 1500 dollars on furniture just because it has Paula Deens name on it. Many people, including myself wouldn’t buy her products anyway after she was kicked off the air for using racial slurs. Some other notable bad brand extensions include Zippo lighters creating a men and women’s fragrance, Snooki coming out with tanning lotion, and Eva Longoria opening a steakhouse for women.

With all brand extensions there is a great amount of risk as well as reward. After examining all the best and worst extensions, I think the best way in going about brand extension is to produce products that are similar to or have a link to products you have created in the past. You should also keep in mind the two factors of success product fit and leverage as this will help you create a successful product. Lastly do a SWOT analysis and create products based on the strengths and opportunities you have.

Super Bowl Segmentation

With the Super Bowl being such a one-sided affair, it was the perfect game for examining the commercials. I enjoyed many more of the commercials this year than I have in the past. The sponsors of the game, as well as many other companies, did a great job of appealing to a target market.

You may disagree with me about this and say that everyone watches the Super bowl, but I think otherwise. Even though the commercials are great, people who are not football fans are not going to watch the games. There is evidence of this when you look further into what commercials were played and what the intent was of each commercial. When examining the commercials further I found that many companies definitely used marketing segmentation to reach a specific target market. Marketing segmentation is dividing the total market into different groups with similar product needs. This is done so that you can design a marketing mix and reach a specific target market. The groups of people targeted were obviously football fans, but also men and the older generations. When saying older generations, I am talking about the age group from 21 to 55. You cannot really pinpoint a certain age by just watching, but we know they were focusing on older people instead of younger.

While watching, I wrote down every commercial I could and what it advertised. In doing so I found that approximately 100% of the commercials were something that people aged 21 to 55 would buy. There were not any commercials seeking to catch the attention of children to buy toys or to watch there shows. The only thing I could see smaller children wanting to buy is maybe a Butterfingers candy bar. Everything else was obviously geared toward older people because these are the people who actually watch the game. For the segment I named football fans, I calculated that only about 36% of the commercials focused directly on football fans. When saying directly related to football fans I took into account something you may eat or drink while attending a game, or watching it from home. The 36% also included the network you may watch the game on, like NFL Network. Commercials that I labeled as geared toward football fans were also interesting because they were the ones that either used seductive women or cute animals to attract consumers to their products.  Approximately 50% of all the commercials were focused directly at men. This number included mainly things such as truck commercials, beer commercials, and movie commercials that men would be interested in. I thought Chevrolet did the best job at designing a commercial to sell their truck to the people watching.  Men obviously make up the majority of people watching the game. One survey from CNS news said that 67% of people watching the Super Bowl are men. So for Chevrolet, why not present their truck as tough and dependable? It is apparent that their truck is tough and dependable because they use a tough cowboy hauling around cattle to portray this image. This is a classic example of how Chevrolet has advertised their trucks.

I guess most of the information above we could call primary data since I collected it by myself. The target markets used by the companies to market their products were the right ones to use due to the fact that these are the people that watch the game. It was kind of interesting to discover that only 36% of commercials were geared directly toward football fans. This is the biggest game of the year for all football fans yet only 36% of the ads are directly related to them. If you just look at this number it seems kind of odd, but when looking at all the numbers it becomes easier to understand. Even though men and football fans are two separate segments, many aspects of the segments are very similar. Many men are also going to be football fans. Even though the advertisers did not advertise directly to football fans they did in fact advertise heavily to men. This makes sense when we say that 67% of people watching are men. For the other 33% of people watching, most would be under the first marketing segment of people ages 21 to 55. The marketing segments were brilliantly set up by most of the sponsors and other companies, reaching out to all the different people watching, to buy their products. For me this Super Bowl had the best commercials by far. All the commercials were fun, innovative and they made their products seem attractive to the eye. Without the great quality of advertisements the Super Bowl may not have had any viewers.

Sport Marketing Strategies

Marketing is everywhere. Every time you turn around, you can see some kind of marketing whether it is a commercial, newspaper ads, billboards, and many other ways to promote different products and services.

At the Texas versus Iowa State basketball game I found many different forms of marketing. State farm advertised on the backboard. Advertising here made their name very visible to anyone watching the game. Every time either team shoots the ball you see the State Farm logo. With each team shooting more than 60 times during the game, there is a potential for the audience to see this State Farm ad over 120 times per game. The location of this ad was brilliant because of its visibility. A different style was used by Southwest Airlines to promote their service. They created a game played by a selected audience, where they had to shoot basketballs and make three different shots into a suit case. If the audience member made all three shots in the allotted time, they won two tickets to anywhere Southwest Airlines flies. This form of advertising was fun for all fans to watch and cheer on the challenger. It is also fun for the selected participant because of the potential prize at the end of the game. Having this promotional during a timeout was also a great tactic because at that point in the game you still had 6,000 people still in their seats. Having this game at half-time would have been less effective because many people go to use the restroom or get concessions at this time. Another great form of marketing was the Chevron toy car challenge. I have seen and participated in this game at numerous sporting events. This game is played at half-time or during some kind of intermission, the game consist of three Chevron toy cars and as an audience member you have to pick which car will win the race. Chevron does a good job in their marketing because they get the whole audience to participate. Audience participation is great because as a corporation you know you are reaching out to the audience and have made a great selling point. All these forms mentioned above are great examples of advertising through sport by using college basketball as an avenue to reach fans about certain products.

                In my experience at the college basketball game I saw hundreds of ways different ways marketing is used, but one stood out more than any of the others. The Harlem Globetrotters did the best job throughout the game to promote their product. They had numerous advertisements on the jumbotron, as well as a dunk contest played by three selected audience members. The product being sold, Globetrotters basketball, was easily recognized because it was presented in bold lettering with a red, white and blue scheme (the Globetrotters traditional colors). The product was very well marketed; it was clever to present the product in a place where thousands of basketball fans already were. Who better to advertise to than to the fans of the sport?  Place also known as distribution deals with this same kind of marketing strategy. The ad was presented in the same place where it is actually taking place. If fans could come to the Frank Erwin Center once, why wouldn’t they come again and see some more basketball? The Place is also important due to the fact that everyone in attendance was a basketball fan. I believe they got more for their money advertising for their event because of the heavy concentration of fans. A type of pricing strategy that they used was to not present the price of the tickets at all. This is probably because it was a little more expensive than what people wanted to pay. Another way the Globetrotters got around presenting a price was to do a slam dunk contest and the winner received a free package of four Globetrotter tickets. Not only does this have to do with the pricing strategy, but it could very well be considered a promotional strategy.

Even with all the marketing during the game, it did not take away from the game quality. I can see how some people might see this advertising as overwhelming or a distraction from the game. I felt as though it added to the whole experience of the game. During the breaks in the action, these different advertising strategies helped to keep me entertained. Without this game, there would have been many fans, including myself, that would have been bored. Product and company promotion during timeouts and halftime keeps the audience entertained throughout the entire game. From a revenue standpoint I don’t see marketing during a game hurting or helping.  Ads and promotional games are not what increases ticket sales individually. Marketing of the two teams is what creates more revenue. Indirectly the different marketing strategies may bring in some revenue due to the fact that it keeps the audience entertained at all times.