Toward a better understanding of core and peripheral market demand for women’s spectator sports: An importance-performance map analysis approach based on gender

ABSTRACT

Although the concept of market demand has been extensively examined in the literature, most scholarly efforts have been devoted to understanding men’s spectator sports. There is scant research that investigates market demand for women’s spectator sports with a focus on gender dynamics. This study sought to fill that gap through developing a formative–formative hierarchical component model of core and peripheral market demand for a women’s professional tennis event (the Wuhan Open) and examining their differing impacts on future attendance intentions based on gender. Results derived from the importance-performance map analysis (IPMA) indicated that the most important core market demand components were player quality and economic consideration. However, only women considered game schedule important, while only men deemed venue characteristics and peripheral services important. Our study highlights the necessity and merits of deciphering market demand for women’s spectator sports in a more nuanced manner and contributes to the growing marketing literature on women’s sports fandom. Managerially, we offer practical implications per the IPMA for more effective and efficient integration of marketing initiatives.

HIGHLIGHTS

• We examined the impact of perceived market demand for a women’s professional tennis event on attendance intentions based on gender.

• Game schedule was more important among women, while venue characteristics and peripheral services were more important among men.

• Event activities, venue characteristics, and peripheral services were of little to no importance among women.

• Player quality and economic consideration were of greatest importance in enhancing attendance intentions regardless of gender.

KEYWORDS:

• Market demand
• women’s sports
• women
• PLS-SEM
• IPMA

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Dr. Anna Baeth for her constructive feedback on the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Shanghai Pujiang Program [2020PJC098].