Media Outlets Utilised by Equine Enthusiasts

Introduction: Through the development of digitalmedia, the role of traditional media has been modified (Burk, Grimmer& Palowski, 2016). Understanding what role digital media and traditionalmedia have within the equine industry and how they coexist is important to thefuture success of the industry. Furthermore, understanding habits of the ‘NetGeneration’ and sport consumers in general can help towards determining thereason why equine sport enthusiast make the choices they do (Park, Kim, &Seo, 2015). In all, this study aims to determine and understand which mediaplatforms equine enthusiast use to watch equine events, to communicate withothers equine enthusiasts and to gain information on the equine industry. 

Material & Methods: This is a qualitative study analysedthrough thematic analysis. A total of 20 participants aged between 18 to 25years were separated in six focus groups. They held between 2 and 5participants. A total of seven countries are represented including Australia,the Bahamas, Great Britain, Canada, Indonesia, Norway, and the United Statesdemonstrating participants coming from a mix between emerging equine marketsand established ones. Within this study, 8 disciplines are represented, andriding levels vary from non-riders such as show jumping course designers intraining to international level competitors in Olympic disciplines. The firstlayer of thematic analysis included changing the colour font of the transcriptsdepending on which aim the information corresponded to. To further identifycommon threads within the main themes, printed transcripts sections werehighlighted and annotated. Finally, highlighted sections and themes withinevery transcript were put in separate resumé documents making comparisonbetween them easier. The thematic analysis produced the following results. 

Results: The results show that 55% use TV towatch equine events; 70% of participants watch equine events via a live stream;30% noted that watching an event in person was preferred; and 35% ofparticipants watch equine events through video on demand platforms.Furthermore, word of mouth is still extremely present as a method ofcommunication within the industry (Hooper, 2013). In close second, social mediais starting to develop as a form of online face-to-face communication (Cao,2010) through the ‘liking’, commenting, ‘tagging’ and sharing of various post,pictures and/or articles.

All participants use both methods ofcommunication in their everyday lives. Furthermore, to gain information on theequine industry, participants highlighted the following methods: websites(70%), social media (85%), magazines (55%) and face-to-face conversations (80%)as their most used. In all, the participants within this research use acombination of traditional and digital media within all aims of this research.

Discussion & Conclusions: Results showed that a variety ofboth traditional and digital media is used to fulfil participant needs aboutequine sport. The use of more traditional media was due to the appearance of itbeing a more credible source of information and as having a greater ability toincrease awareness about equine sport to the general public (Rowe, 2011; Roan,2015). Digital media platforms were used more because they were convenient,entertaining, could answer specific queries, and report current affairs.

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