The golf apparel market is undergoing something of a revolution. From hoodies on tour to the easing of restrictions on what can and can’t be worn in the clubhouse, and some clubs doing away with dress codes altogether, golfers have more options than ever to express themselves and their style.
For golf manufacturers, these recent shifts in consumer demand are creating difficult decisions about how to design and market golf apparel. For retailers too, buying decisions are changing.
Sporting Insights’ new golf apparel research is designed to address these issues and provide evidence based support for what will be potentially very different strategies across the golf industry.
New questions will delve deeper into important topics, including consumer buying patterns, pain points and preferences for garment types and materials. Advertising preferences will be interrogated in detail to understand areas including golfers’ preferred model sizes and attitudes towards airbrushing. Such additional detail and clearer segmentation will help to add extra nuance to traditionally important (and still included in the new research) metrics such as brand ownership and preferences.
Sarah Goward, leading the project at Sporting Insights, added “We’re excited to launch what will be our most sophisticated research programme focusing on this fascinating topic. Our plan is to size audiences by segment to identify how populous certain groups of golfers are but also how important they are in terms of regular or higher spend. That will help our clients decide how to best target their resources. We also hope to boost the women’s sample to take a deep dive into this often overlooked area. Many companies design or stock very limited women’s ranges, but may be missing out on achievable revenue by offering the wrong or not enough options.”
The research will cover both core golfers and less traditional players, including range-only golfers. Fieldwork is due to launch in July, with reports available in due course for:
- UK
- USA
- France
- Sweden
- Germany
- Japan
- Korea