Market Segmentation of Golf Event Spectators Using Leisure Benefits

ABSTRACT

The proliferation of golf events has provided increased opportunities to watch professional golf tournaments. The purpose of this study is to examine a variety of leisure benefits sought by Korean golf event spectators and provide useful marketing strategies to fulfill their needs. Within the contexts of leisure benefits, different individuals tend to assign different meanings to the same leisure experience. In this sense, golf event spectators are likely to pursue heterogeneous leisure benefits from their engagement. This study identified four distinct spectator groups (i.e., escape seekers, exercise seekers, interest seekers, and excitement seekers) and uncovered significant differences among these segments. Results provided empirical support that event-based sport tourism marketers need to implement diverse strategies to increase and reinforce their customer base.

Keywords:

• Leisure benefits
• event-based sport tourism
• golf event spectators
• market segmentation

Acknowledgments

This article is based on the first author's master degree thesis. The authors owe many thanks to anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.