News
Full Counts. Where do those statistics used in club and ball ads come from?
9/17/2002
You may have read ads claiming a club or ball is America’s top seller according to Golf Datatech (www.golfdatatech.com). This market-research firm tracks the sale of golf products by electronically gathering information directly from the cash register of 600 on-course and 250 off-course golf shops. Statistical models from this sample project the entire golf market in the form of detailed monthly reports broken into categories such as unit sales, dollar sales, selling price, inventories, market share, and distribution percentages of balls, clubs, bags, shoes, and gloves. "The idea for the company came from a real void in manufacturers knowing what sold through at retail," says Tom Stine, former publisher of Golfweek magazine, who founded the company with fellow industry veteran Dave Overmyer. "There needed to be accurate and timely data, so we set out with those two criteria." Golf Datatech began delivering reports in 1997, and companies started quoting them shortly thereafter. "We have very strict policies on what can and can’t be used in ads, in order to maintain confidentiality," says Stine. "They can use their own numbers, but not their competitors’." Twice a year, the company also surveys 5,000 "serious" golfers-who have played a minimum of 16 rounds a year-to determine what equipment they’re thinking about buying and what affects their buying decisions. Those results are reported in the Golf Product Attitude and Usage Surveys. The company also performs proprietary research for manufactures, some of whom claim they subscribe to the service for reasons other than the ability to quote the numbers in ads. "We just want the reports for data on sell-through, inventory, and to see what competitors are doing," says TaylorMade’s Steinbach
