Abstract:
The concept of marketing, with its primary focus on
meeting customer needs, is being adopted by federal agencies
such as the U.S. Forest Service who are in the business of
providing, among other things, recreation opportunities for
their visiting public. Although not a new concept, the
notion of applying marketing to federal wildland recreation
is a relatively new idea and not as yet well developed.
This study presented experience-based recreation as a
useful framework from which to develop a marketing approach
to providing recreation opportunities. Market segmentation,
a standard marketing technique, was used to identify
specific user groups upon which to focus marketing efforts.
Market segments were formed on the basis of visitor
preferences for recreation experiences. These data were
used as input to a recreation opportunity marketing plan.
A sample of 1057 visitors to the Inyo National Forest
(N.F.) were surveyed during the summer of 1989. Visitor
experience preferences were measured using the
psychological outcome items developed and tested by Driver
and others. Cluster analysis was used to identify nine
experience domains important to Inyo N.F. visitors.
Visitors were cluster analyzed based on their preferences
for the nine experience domains and those with similar
preferences were grouped together. As a result, four
distinct market segments or experience types were identified
and further described according to socio-demographic and
recreation participation descriptors.
The final element of the study was to illustrate how
information about the four experience-based visitor segments
could be made part of a marketing plan designed to assist
resource managers better meet the needs of their recreating
visitors. A 5-step recreation opportunity marketing plan
for the Inyo N.F. was presented that incorporated basic
marketing principles and was designed to target visitors in
the experience-based market segments.
