Commercial Dynamics and the Transformation of Climbing Activities: A analysis of Indoor Climbers in France

1. Aim and Research Questions The aim of this contribution is to analyse the characteristics of indoor climbers in France and their relations (i.e. satisfaction, attachment, loyalty) to the private climbing centres they are members of. Since 1990, the number of climbing participants has grown significantly along with the increasing number of commercial climbing centres. However, this new generation of climbers has never been studied and we can wonder whether it simply represents a quantitative extension of the climbers' population or whether it represents a deeper qualitative change of the market demand with the apparition of new types of climbers, consequently the emergence of more commercialised relaitonships between indoor climbers and their centres. 2. Theoretical Background and Literature Review Combining the artificialization of climbing surfaces with commercialization, artificial climbing centres, whether private or commercial, have progressively developed in France to generate is called the "indoorisation" (Van Bottenburg & Salome, 2010) of climbing. With this indoorisation, new market operators have developed new offers and organizational methods with lower constraints (Pociello, 1995) in urban centres. For example, in France, 70% of commercial climbing centres were created after 2005 (Aubel & Lefevre, 2022). In this context, the number of indoor climbers has increased too. Therefore, the world of climbing is going through a deep mutation, due to "indoorisation" and "commercialization". In order to describe these "new" indoor climbers within these commercial transformations, we employ an exploratory research approach to identify sport consumer clusters. For this contribution, we have adopted the framework of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) following the article by Askegaard and Linnet (2011). This approach examines macro and meso-social levels for a better socio-historical understanding of the evolution of climbing consumption patterns, and cultures and subcultures of markets related to indoor climbing. Thirst, we use a « Social space of sport » (Pociello, 1980, 1996) To identify the socio-cultural distribution of indoor climbing modalities (practices, modalities, values) and second we use Importance-Performance Analysis, Tetraclass Model (Llosa, 1997), place attachement in recreationnal settings (Kyle & al., 2005) to understand the impact of the offerings on the formation of climbers. 3. Research Design, Methodology and Data Analysis We adopted a quantitative survey implemented in cooperation with the French indoor climbing company, leader in France and located in 13 different cities. The questionnaire comprised 43 questions divided into six blocks: identity project, types of participation, satisfaction, place attachment and brand identification, values and ethical positions and socio-demographics (age, gender/sex, employment status, education levels, geographic location...). The survey was conducted between 1st November to 15th December 2022 in the 29 centres of the company and using its consumer database. A total of 17,455 usable questionnaires were collected. Unfortunately, the company did not have a clear idea of its overall consumer population, therefore, we are not in a position to say whether our sample is representative or not. 4.Results/Findings and DiscussionWe are currently analyzing the results. We first started to conduct descriptive statistics, a factorial analysis, PCA. Our first results seem to confirm the democratization of the activity with a further feminization but also confirm the other classic characteristics of French climbers: an over-representation of the upper classes and 25 to 40 years old climbers. Furthermore, the results seem to closely align with those of Boutroy & Champely (2012) and Aubel & Lefevre (2022). Our PCA shows has double opposition; 1/ leisure practice versus competitive practice, 2/ vertical fitness versus mountain incorporating different styles. We identify three clusters: vertical fitness enthusiasts, nature followers, and performers. However, we will further sub-segment these clusters for greater precision.The full results will be presented at the conference. 5. Conclusion, Contribution, and Implication This work contributes filling the knowledge gap regarding French climbers in a context of a deep mutation of the marketplace. Such a large-scale survey will increase our understanding of indoor climbers' profile in France and will allow us to better understand the reciprocal influence of marketplace's changes on consumers' profile, behaviors and (sub)cultures.