The Pellucid Perspective - October 2021 - 2

MARKET ANALYSIS
Why Market Analysis is " fun " again
By Jim Koppenhaver
W
hen I first entered the industry 20 years ago, one of
my immediate realizations was that there was no integrated,
quick or efficient way to do an analysis of a
" market " for the size, shape and health of golf. There were silo'd
pieces of information (demographics, golf participation, supply)
and then just plain blank spots (rounds, golf revenue, any
historical data, weather impact). If you attempted to assemble
" the pieces " there was such violent disagreement as to make
the analysis indefensible. True to Pellucid's DNA, we set out
to build our own data sources, single-source delivery tool and
methodology which resulted in the creation of the Golf Local
Market Analyzer (GLMA) which is now just over 15 years old
and, like the rest of us, keeps getting better with age (ha, ha).
The slight challenge along that journey, in the words of several
prospects (and clients as well), is " no one wants to pay Pellucid
for an analysis that quantifies multi-dimensionally how
bad things are. " Hence, for the past 15 years, golf market analysis
= no fun. As is now well-documented, the COVIdend has
changed the trajectory of golfers, rounds and golf revenue in
nearly every US location in '20 and continuing into '21. We
completed the update of the GLMA with the '20 golfer base
and rounds played (both consumer-survey-reported and the
more reliable facility-reported tallies) and, all of a sudden, market
analysis is now producing positive numbers on many dimensions
and we're seeing a healthy uptick in interest in Stuart
and Jim's labor of love for over a decade.
Engaged readers of The Perspective are very familiar with
this capability because the GLMA is the information platform
that powers our Market Focus section monthly providing a
brief overview of one of the Top 25 US Golf Markets as defined
by Pellucid's annual scorecard methodology (also made possible
and efficient by the GLMA). This month I'm going to give you
the expanded view of a market to demonstrate " the full power of
the deathstar " (oops, wrong movie), I mean the broader range of
its information and insights for any given US geography using
the Metro Core Business Statistical Area (CBSA) of Atlanta,
GA as an example.
In a quick summary of what's " under the hood " , we've built
the GLMA using 5 basic building blocks:
* Demographics from the US Census (not yet updated
to '20 actual so the '20 projection off the '00 Census)
* Golf Participation & Frequency from the annual
National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA) survey
with whom we partner and license the golf results
* Facility database from the Internet Golf Course
Database (IGDB) of which Pellucid is one of four
consortium members (we helped build and shape it)
o Pellucid enhances the IGDB with proprietary
facts and measures such as our DMA-based
facility segments (Private, Learning & Practice,
2 The Pellucid PersPecTive
For those familiar with Atlanta and for others to look closely,
you can see what's referred to as " the Perimeter " (I-285) encircling
the metro area in the center of the map. You can see a
considerable amount of supply obviously is in the suburbs out
to Stone Mountain to the east, Alpharetta and Marietta to the
north and Hartsfield Airport to the south etc. On the map
OctOber 2021
Public-Premium/Value/Price) as well as an annual
rounds figure for every US facility, assigned weather
station and an inventory of Closed Facilities since
'10 and year closed
* Weather impact data comes from our longstanding
partnership with AccuWeather
* And the whole package is delivered in the Alteryx data
integration and Geographic Information System (GIS)
platform
The result is, unlike 20 years ago, Pellucid/Edgehill and our
clients can now do an integrated market analysis across 11 dimensions
in <15 minutes, anytime day or night. Now that we've
got the boring details handled, let's get into some pictures and
our analysis of the Atlanta CBSA to show you what our progressive
clients can see.
Everyone loves maps so let's go there first. Below you can
see, black line outline, the area included in the Atlanta CBSA:
The Pellucid Perspective - October 2021

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