Reviving an Industry
TARGET
Free-Bowlers | 18-26
AMF and the bowling industry have experienced a steady loss of revenue over the course of the last decade - industry volume has contracted by nearly a quarter in the last 10 years, representing close to a billion dollars in revenue loss.
• Social dependents - participate in social circles, both online and offline, and use these social interactions to validate themselves.
Coupled with the emptiness of bowling facilities during daytime hours, it’s obvious that interest in bowling is waning. As such, AMF Bowling approached us with the following challenge:
• Highly Impressionable - this group has a great potential to convert new customers through social interactions and competitive challenges.
Create a membership organization for people who enjoy bowling that will increase affinity for the sport.
•This group is old enough that they won’t grow out of bowling, yet young enough to not yet be set in their ways.
It was immediately apparent that the problems causing the decline of bowling would likely be subdued through the development of a membership organization, but not necessarily solved. With that asumption in mind, we set out to identify the core issues leading to bowling’s decline. OPPORTUNITY
PROBLEM
Leverage the reasons people do go bowling while mitigating the factors that keep them from bowling to create a new model for AMF’s business and an example for the industry.
Bowling is losing its place in the typical consideration set.
•Why people DON’T bowl.
INSIGHTS
•Why people DO bowl.
Expectation of Fun
Skill
Above all, people go bowling with the expectation of having fun; the activity fulfilling their needs for recreation and entertainment.
One of our focus group participants put it best,
“I don’t bowl because I suck, and I suck because I don’t bowl.”
Competition
The Vicious ‘Bowl Less’ Cycle
Add to that external factors like time, cost, and distance to travel, all factors that consumers indicated effect their participation in bowling, and it’s not surprising that the sport is in decline.
Within the fun, bowlers are driven primarily by two behaviors: competition and socialization. Whether league, free, or first-time bowlers, they fall somewhere within this diagram, many times with overlap of competition and social.
Frequency
Skill in the sport of bowling is a natural development of frequency playing....as is lack of skill. And lack of skill prevents people from going more frequently, which in turn effects their skill level, in an endless cycle.
Socialization
STRATEGY
Build people’s confidence by increasing their competence. • Social Integration (short-term) Our approach involves two strategic phases | • Hub and Spoke Expansion (long-term)