Abstract

The golf industry has become the center of attention for recreational activities in the participant sport market; however, there has been little effort made to understand golf consumer and their consumption behavior using the concept of ‘recreational specialization’ which segments the golfers based on level of specialization in golf. The purpose of this study was to explore the differences in the relationships among perceived service quality, price of playing golf, overall customer satisfaction with the course, and a player’s intention to revisit the same golf course based on the magnitude of recreation specialization in golf. Four public and two private golf courses from the southeastern state of the United States were randomly chosen from a list in a golf magazine. The 365 surveys among 417 participants were ultimately analyzed. Multiple group analysis was conducted in order to investigate differences in relationships among service quality, price, customer satisfaction, and revisit intentions between groups based on the level of recreation specialization. The key findings were 1) for more specialized golfers, satisfaction with price did not affect overall customer satisfaction or revisit intention, however, service quality significantly influenced both overall customer satisfaction and revisit intention, 2) for less specialized golfers, satisfaction with price significantly influenced overall customer satisfaction but did not affect revisit intention. Knowledge about which the determinants of satisfaction are different between more and less specialized golfers could provide a better understanding of how different marketing strategies should be implemented for different specialized levels of golfers.