The identification of the consumer decision-making styles for crossfit training in South Africa

Abstract

The crossfit industry in South Africa is currently still in its infancy stages compared to that of the United States of America, where it was conceptualised. With the rapid growth currently experienced in this section of the fitness industry, there has been a great influx of new business owners and entrepreneurs, who have been enticed to enter this industry by the prospect of a rapidly growing business. Sinkovics, Leelapanyalert and Yamin (2010) wrote that an understanding of the decision-making of consumers would be critical for marketing activities, market segmentation and the development of marketing strategies. It is with this in mind that the study set out to identify the crossfit consumer in South Africa in order to profile and segment the consumer. This study used quantitative and qualitative methods to collect data from existing crossfit consumers in South Africa. The research instrument used was the short version of the Consumer Style Inventory (CSI) developed by Sproles and Kendall (1986). From the findings, four of the possible eight consumer styles were identified and confirmed to be relevant to the crossfit consumer in South Africa. These four consumer orientations were quality consciousness, brand consciousness, fashion consciousness and price consciousness. The most notable finding was that the crossfit consumer is not only quality conscious but also value conscious. This implies that the buying decision made by the consumer is rooted in a price and quality trade-off, with price only being a small part of the overall consideration to purchase or not. Quality as a measure plays a pivotal role for the consumer as they rely heavily on extrinsic factors to not only decrease the risk associated with the purchase but also to measure the perceived quality of the service that they are about to purchase.