SAM Coverage
Jim Spring
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Keeping the Boom Going
by Jim Spring, President, Leisure Trends Group Last fall a snowboard retailer told me that his customers were getting older. “They are more interested…
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An Offer Nobody Can Refuse
by Jim Spring, President, Leisure Trends Group Ask a skier or rider why he or she does not ski or ride more often and…
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A Bear of a Market
Two hunters run out of bullets and find themselves chased by a bear. One stops to put on his running shoes. The other says…
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Uphill Battle For Downhiller Growth
Skier/rider visits have hovered around the 54 million mark for over a decade, with a hiccup now and then, such as this past season’s…
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Who’s on the Slopes?
Skier visit numbers should be up, especially at areas that are an easy drive from metropolitan markets. “Getting there” expeditiously and without major hassles…
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Our Customers: Younger, More Riding
Industry marketers, trying to catch all the subtleties of demography, have been trying to balance the two scenarios of a) the baby boomers on…
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Cost vs. Time: Which Is the Key Constraint?
In Boise, the Price of Skiing Matters by Mike Shirley, General Manager, Bogus Basin, Idaho Reading and re-reading David Rowan’s report on the Gallup…
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Subtle but Important Shifts in Customers
[In this article, the author uses “downhill” or “downhillers” to mean alpine skiers and boarders collectively.—Ed.] Age has been the engine pulling the ski…
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Older, Richer and Skiing More Often
Editor’s Note: In this article, the author uses “downhillers” to mean the sum of skiers and snowboarders. Note also that the National Skier/Boarder Opinion…
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Small Areas As Breeders: Myth Or Reality?
Are small ski areas truly the “breeding grounds” of new skiers, or is this assumption an unchallenged myth? The editor of this magazine asked…
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Targeting The Elusive, Unfaithful Skier Market
The ski industry decided to find out about the meanderings of what it suspected was an unfaithful consumer base. The unsuspecting targets of the…
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How Many Skiers Are There Anyway?
In the July 1991 issue of SAM we ran an Issues piece by Jim Spring, partner in the research service of Leisure Trends/Gallup (LT/G),…
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What They Say Or What They Do
The ski industry has long struggled with basic skier statistics: How many skiers are there? How frequently do they ski? At what rate are…
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Brand Revisited
The focus group study conducted by the Brand Group a year ago startled some of us in its indictment of the ski industry’s inability…