Brand awareness of obstacle course racing events

The current study investigated brand awareness, event awareness, and event satisfaction on event purchase and purchase intentions for three major obstacle course event companies (Tough Mudder, Spartan Race, and The Warrior Dash). The study also examined the influence of consumer characteristics (demographic and past behavior) on satisfaction and the satisfaction–repurchase relationship among race participants and spectators. Using a consumer awareness theory as a basis, an online survey was developed and the link was positioned on the Mud Run Guide Facebook site to recruit subjects. Descriptive statistics were presented for consumer characteristics, past behavior, and satisfaction of the survey participants. Correlations were presented for consumer characteristics and past behavior on event awareness, event purchase, and purchase intention. The last research question examined differences in event purchase intentions for event awareness, brand recognition, and tagline recognition. The main findings of the study were that brand imaging appears to have more of an impact on consumers than taglines, consumer satisfaction with events is focused in areas of quality of obstacles (M=4.0), atmosphere of the race events (M=4.1), and consumers are least satisfied with event price (M=3.3). Additionally, the typical consumer in the study included males and females between the ages of 25-44 (n=28, 72%) that had previous sport experience. Further, most previous OCR consumers plan to participate in future events so they are a prime target market group, and therefore OCR companies may focus strongly on customer retention.