Sociological Perspectives of Sports Consumer Behavior Study

• Published in: JAPAN JOURNAL OF SPORT SOCIOLOGY Vol. 4; pp. 63 - 78
• Main Authors: Ahn, Changkyu, Fujiwara, Kengo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Japanese
• Published: Japan Society of Sport Sociology 1996
• Subjects: An analysis framework; Choice behavior of goods; Consumer behavior; Socialization into sport; Sport involvement
• ISSN: 0919-2751; 2185-8691
• DOI: 10.5987/jjsss.4.63

Sports have emerged a strong cultural dimension with the rapid expansion of sports industry. Sports especially allows a wide range of options, and consequently sports involvement have diversified in various places. This phenomenon has brought about a change it the consumer behavior. But even then not much is known about the essential nature of sports consumer behavior. The consumer bahavior has diversified at present with emphasis on consumption. Keeping this point in view, this study assumes the sports consumer behavior that includes one to use diverse goods and facilities as a very important factor, and has tried to throw light on the basic mechanism of socialization of the sports consumers who are showing diverse behavior. We discussed the effectiveness of “socialization into sports” by taking note of the fact that “behavior of day to day living” is a social activity carried out through the medium of goods and facilities, and also assuming that “sports involvement”, a leisure activity carried out in the third living space, is a consumer behavior. The results can be summed up as follows; 1) The difficulty involved in understanding consumer behavior from conventional view of functionalism suggests a new area of study, namely, sports consumer behavior, from the total viewpoint of realm of living. 2) The sport involvement activity that cannot exist without the place of activity has a strong selective element of goods as the figurative symbol. 3) Adoption of social system in sport consumer behavior is a very meaningful thing for explaining the process of socialization of consumer as an area of interdisciplinary study. 4) The careful study of the way of life and lifestyle will provide new theoretical data for concepts related to sports socialization research, method of analysis and preparing conprehensive model for the variable factors.