The Professional Golf Product: Spectators' Views

Abstract

3,019 spectators attending six PGA golf tournaments rated the relative importance of 27 reasons to attend on a 5-point Likert scale; spectators provided three phrases describing their thoughts of the event and they completed demographic data categories. The internal consistency of the scale was 0.902 as measured by Cronbach Alpha. ANOVA followed by the Tukey test was used to seek differences between groups based on gender, age, and golf- playing frequency with an alpha level set at .05. Several differences per grouping were found resulting in the following observations: (al) nongolfers/infrequent golfers attended because of reasons, such as scenery, fitness benefits, event image, and golfer personality; (b) being close to the field of competition highlights the learning aspect of spectating; (c) an entertainment focus appeals to females whereas a learning focus attracts males; (d) market segmentation can be implemented based on study results; (e) the “scenery aspect” differentiated the PGA spectators from other tours spectators.

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