According to the article, “Under Armour’s Willful Digital Moves” (Saghian and Murray, 2016), one of the major markets identified was female consumers. The article also touched on marketing seggments such as nutrition, fitness, global markets, athletes, and even social media. Looking at the four types of market segmentation, Under Armour focused on demographics, which looks at non-character traits. These traits include age, gender, profession, and even income. The next market segmentation could be described as the why, psychographic segmentation, which looks at personalities and interests. Some of these traits include hobbies, lifestyles, beliefs, and personality characteristics.

Under Armour founder, Kevin Plank, decided to take a risk with a campaign, “I Will What I Want,” geared to reach the female segment. His belief was his team could do better than the lack of success from competitor Adidas and in 2014, the campaign was released. The overall goal of the campaign “was to celebrate women who had the physical and mental strength to tune out the external pressures and turn inward and chart their own course” (Saghian and Murray, 2016). Under Armour had a clearly defined goal and their message had deep meaning with the female audience causing the “I Will What I Want” campaign’s success to surpass original goals set by the company. In fact, the campaign “was the highest earned impressions campaign we’d ever done” (Saghian and Murray, 2016), according to senior vice president of global brand marketing, Adrienne Lofton.

What’s Next?

The “I Will What I Want” campaign “took women’s apparel to 30% of Under Armour’s sales” (Saghian and Murray, 2016). This campaign has given Under Armour a significant edge within this competitive market. Should Under Armour continue to target a broader female audience or move on to a different market segment?

Is there room for a new market? And what should that market be? The equestrian “industry as a whole is $102 billion. The competition sector is $28.3 billion, and recreation is $18 billion. There are seven million potential recreational and competitive customers” (Lisa M, 2019). There are 4.6 million Americans involved in the equestrian industry. These include horse ownership, service providers, spectators, and competitors. The Olympics offers three levels of horse competitions including dressage, jumping and eventing. Other disciplines of horses include rodeos, english riding, western riding, stock handling, and even team sports. Cowboy Christmas, which is the official gift show of the rodeo finals, set an attendance record in 2015 of over 200,000 people. All-American Quarter Horse Congress, the largest single breed show in the world, attracted 650,000 people and generated “$409 million for the central Ohio economy” (AQHA Congress, n.d.). Let’s not forget to factor in thorough bred horse racing which includes the Kentucky Derby.

The diversity of this market includes a wide variety of events such as racing, showing, recreation, farm and ranch work, rodeo, and informal competitions. The average horse owner has a “household income of less than $50,000 and 28% have an annual income of over $100,000” (The Equestrian Channel, n.d.). The average horse owner is married, female, “36-65 years of age” (AQHA, 2021), and has a bachelor’s degree.. According to recent statistics, there are 9.2 million horses in the United States with “one out of 63 Americans” (Lisa M, 2019) being involved with horses in some way. “Texas, California, and Florida have the highest population of horses; while Oklahoma, Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri, North Carolina, Colorado, and Pennsylvania round out the top ten states for highest population of horses” (Lisa M, 2019).

According to the Equestrian Apparel Market report, equestrian apparel alone has a market size of “2512 million users in the United States, and it is expected to reach 2817 million, in the United States, by the end of 2027” (More, 2021). This means the apparel market has a “forecast to grow from USD $5.9 billion in 2018, and reach USD $7.6 billion by 2025” (DataIntelo, 2021). These numbers only reflect the apparel market which includes helmets, clothes, boots and gloves. This market is dominated by females (72% of market). Looking at other areas in Under Armour’s industry, we see that “the general trend of the equine culture is to be outdoors. Equestrians drink lots of thirst quenchers, wear weather-driven and/or athletic clothing and eat on the run (nutritional bars)” (The Equestrian Channel, n.d.).

Riding lessons are on the rise, somewhat due to Covid-19, even with a large percentage of Americans believing horse ownership is inaccessible due to financial burdens or location availability. New riders means more purchases. Revenues continue to be on the rise with “the 2018 Stable Management Fall Business Survey shows continuing improvement in the profitability of the equine industry” (Brown, 2018). The survey shows that 21% of respondents says their business is on the rise with a “direct economic effect on U.S. is $39 billion annually” (AQHA Congress, n.d.). These numbers do not reflect spectators, horse enthusiasts, team horse sports or the Olympics competitors.

I think the next question for Under Armour is ….

Why Not Equestrian?

Thank you for reading and as always, I look forward to hearing from you.