Abstract
The purposes of the present study are threefold: (1) To examine the adaptability of life-style concept to the field of sport management, especially sport marketing research. (2) To examine the adequacy of life-style concept as the base of market segmentation in the field of sport marketing research. (3) To type sport consumer by the theory and the technique of life-style segmentation.The AIO (Activities, Interests, and Opinions) approach is used to operationalize the life-style concept. Questionnaires containing 51 AIO statements are administered to a total of 1000 members of a privately owned swimming school. Three hundred seventy-five usable questionnaires were returned, resulting in a response rate of 37.5%. Factor analysis and Cluster analysis are used to identify the overall structure of swimming school member's life-style and the client groups. 51 life-style (AIO) variables are then factor analyzed. The findings of the study include; (1) There exist six factors representing dimensions of swimming school member's life-style. They are named as "Fashion Conscious", "Achievement ", "Self-Control", "Individuation", "Sports", and "Self-Confidence"-factor, respectively; (2) Life-style factor scores are computed every sample to type (segment) sport consumer by the technique of life-style segmentation. They are then cluster analyzed (two-stage clustering approach). As a result, seven clusters (life-style segments) were selected. They are named as "A Sports and Health conscious oriented group", "A fashion and Health conscious oriented group", "A Indifferent group", "A Health conscious oriented group", "A Sports oriented group", "A Individual group", and "A Steady and Individual group", respectively. These findings confirm that life-style is an observable construct and is a group phenomenon. The findings thus lend a strong support for sociologists' contention that life-style is observable and is a group phenomenon. In all, the study suggests that life-style is also a useful concept in the field of sport management and the life-style analysis should be made more use for the field of sport service marketing in future.
