Sports goods are gaining more and more importance all around the world due to the interest in sports by millions of people. The sporting goods Baton Rouge industry faces a segmented market and a high volatility of demand. The most significant determinant variables of the demand for sports goods, its growth and size, are: fashion, the use value of a sports good, its market price, households' professions and revenues, the populations use of equipment (the ‘equipment rate'), and the sports goods life cycle. On the supply side, the sports goods industry is an oligopoly dominated by a handful of transnational corporations (TNCs) competing together in a global market and competing with a ‘fringe’ of small local firms in each domestic market. It is known from oligopoly theory that price is not the principal variable handled by oligopolistic competitors. This is evidenced in the sports goods industry where major competitive tools are marketing strategies, product differentiation, various sorts of production diversification and. basically; innovation. In recent years, a slower pace of economic growth has triggered a trend of industrial concentration on the supply side of the global market for sports goods. For some firms, crises and recessions have led to low profitability or losses and, sometimes, bankruptcy. With their survival threatened, most other competitors have reacted to the slowdown with appropriate strategies and now are both fast growing and profitable. Since sporting practices are much diversified in developed countries, the demand for sports goods is very much segmented. If one is addicted to skiing and other mountain sports, his or her winter sports goods (skis, ski boots, bindings, snow-boots and so on) are useless for, say, climbing activities in the summer. If, moreover, one play tennis, he or she also require tennis shoes and rackets. Thus, any sports goods producer has to adjust to a segmented market demand with segments of different sizes that do not grow at the same pace. The size of a market segment is first determined by the number of participants: the demand for football goods is likely to be bigger, with over 2.2 million registered participants per year than the demand for canoeing and kayaking equipment, with approximately 30 000 registered participants. The size of each segment also depends on how each sports good can be used, once purchased. Some sporting goods baton rouge can be used by one participant in the practice of more than one sports discipline. Sports clothing and some footwear often offer such a multiple use value or can be worn during general leisure-time activities that do not involve sports. These goods are called ‘trite' sports goods1 and the size of their market segments is somewhat larger than the one for more specialized sports goods. The latter are specifically required for just one sports discipline and cannot be used in other sporting activities (one can use a surfboard only for surfing). Such goods generally characterize those sports that require specific equipment (winter sports, surfing, golf, motor sports, sailing, horse-riding and so on) and arc called ‘equipment-intensive' sports goods. Their market segments arc obviously 28 Handbook on the economics of sport narrower than those for 'trite' sports goods so, even at a global level, they are characterized as 'micro markets. Lee wood is a professional writer, presently writing for baton rouge camping store
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