Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic offers youth sport organizations the opportunity to anticipate consumer behaviour trends and proactively improve their program offerings for more satisfying experiences for consumers post-pandemic. This conceptual paper explores potential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on changing youth sport and physical activity preferences and trends to inform sport and physical activity providers. Drawing from social ecology theory, assumptions for future trends for youth sport and physical activity are presented. Three trends for youth sport and physical activity as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic are predicted: (1) youths’ preferences from organized to non-organized contexts become amplified; (2) reasons for participating in sport or any physical activity shift for youth as well as parents/guardians; (3) consumers reconceptualize value expectations from youth sport and physical activity organizations. The proposed assumptions need to be tested in future research. It is anticipated that sport organizations can respond to changing trends and preferences by innovating in three areas: (1) programming, (2) marketing, and (3) resource management.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic offers youth sport organizations the opportunity to anticipate consumer behaviour trends and proactively improve their program offerings for more satisfying experiences for consumers post-pandemic
Understanding how the pandemic affected participation in sport and physical activity and associated shifts in preferences and consumer behaviour could inform how sport organizations can respond to the pandemic, but possibly improve their programming and offerings to better meet consumers expectations, sustaining their recovery efforts. This article explored these potential impacts on youth sport and physical activity preferences and trends and offered recommendations for community sport practitioners
Informed by social ecology theory, the COVID-19 pandemic acted as an unplanned intervention that has affected, and it is expected to continue to shape, youth sport and physical activity preferences and overall trends
Summary
There are two primary purposes for consumption; autotelic actions, or when the consumer engages in an activity as an end in itself; and instrumental, meaning that the purpose of consumption is as a means to a further end [25]. Many youths consume sport and physical activity for autotelic purposes; they participate for a fun experience [12,27,28,29,30]. Youth sport providers create a value proposition (i.e., what they offer that no one else does) and the youth and the parents evaluate their experiences to determine if the value proposition had led to valuable experiences (i.e., satisfactory experiences) This individually interpreted conceptualization of satisfaction and value is in alignment with an interpretivist paradigm. Social ecology theory and the associated model are helpful in based on culturally and historically situated meanings [40] This means that each individual has their own evaluation of reality and the world around them that is shaped by their environment and surroundings [40].
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