The Competitive Landscape for Leisure: Why Wide Appeal Matters

Abstract

This article reports the results of an analysis of participation across a range of leisure activities in the UK. This work follows that of Chris Hand and Jay Singh in the January 2014 issue of IJMR, which analysed participation and partitioning in the UK betting market using the same UK government DCMS Taking Part database. Our paper uses a duplication technique, widely used in other consumer goods markets, which gives a clear understanding of the polygamous portfolio structure of leisure choices, revealing for the first time how choice processes for free time activities are similar to those for other consumer goods. The results show that leisure activities of all kinds compete for the free time choices of all consumers. The market has some partitioning – for example, ‘cultural’ activities attract more overlapping customers than expected. However, those in this group do not participate in these activities to the exclusion of more populist ones, they are at least as likely to participate in those too. We contrast this with the extant literature, much of which suggests more marked segmentation between leisure activities. This has major implications for the purveyors of competitive offerings; in particular it means that whether marketing ‘cultural’ or ‘leisure’ activities, strategies that emphasise reaching the largest possible number of occasional customers are most likely to succeed.