U of A Lab Created to Research Behavior of Sport Consumers

Photo by University Relations

Terry Eddy

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – A University of Arkansas professor has created a collaborative research unit to support sport organizations that want to know more about their customers and why they behave the way they do.

Terry Eddy, an assistant professor of recreation and sport management, established the Sport Consumer Research Lab and is working with Colin Cork, a doctoral student in the program. Other doctoral students, as well as master’s students, undergraduate honors students and faculty members are expected to conduct research through the lab.

“Often times, sport industry professionals don’t always have the best understanding of what academic researchers can provide, in part because we sometimes don’t do a great job of showing organizations what some of our research can tell them and how it can help them to run their organizations on both a day-to-day and long-term strategy basis,” Eddy said. “Through the mission of the Sport Consumer Research Lab, we hope to do a better job of bridging this gap.”

The ultimate goal is to connect with sport organizations so that they don’t have to make marketing decisions in a vacuum, he said.

Organizations that offer sporting events are selling memories, Eddy said, and there is an emotional connection between fans and teams and players that doesn’t exist in the same way as for products such as shampoo or soft drinks.

“Going to a game, the traditional core sport product, is unique,” he said. “The purchase decision, the interaction at the event, the evaluation of whether to attend in the future, we know that process looks fairly different from other consumer decisions. It’s a distinct setting that has its grounding in marketing but we know from the past 20 years of research that people acting as sport consumers don’t act and decide on purchases in the same way as other types of consumers. Sport consumers and fans are a very interesting population to study.”

Eddy is collaborating with the Sport Marketing Research Institute at the University of Northern Colorado, where he earned a doctorate in sport and exercise science. He co-directed that institute while he was a graduate teaching assistant at Northern Colorado.

The U of A lab will give students and faculty the opportunity to work with real-world challenges that sport organizations face and in return provide research to allow for data-driven decision-making by the sport organizations. Eddy said the field of sport consumer research is growing.

“You don’t see sport management research really coming onto the scene until the late 1980s, when the first research journal on the topic was established,” he said. “Fifteen years ago, there were only a handful of doctoral programs in the world and now there are about 30 in the United States alone, as well as significant growth at the master’s and undergraduate levels. With that growth comes a lot more people doing a lot more research and more journals, etc. Many sport organizations, particularly professional sport franchises, are also performing their own business analytics, which was something we really didn’t see 10 years ago.”

About the University of Arkansas: The University of Arkansas provides an internationally competitive education for undergraduate and graduate students in more than 200 academic programs. The university contributes new knowledge, economic development, basic and applied research, and creative activity while also providing service to academic and professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the University of Arkansas among only 2 percent of universities in America that have the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the University of Arkansas among its top American public research universities. Founded in 1871, the University of Arkansas comprises 10 colleges and schools and maintains a low student-to-faculty ratio that promotes personal attention and close mentoring.