First Post: Diversification Analysis of NASCAR

Hello everyone, I am Eric DeBlasio and I am currently a junior at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont. I am an accounting major with a triple minor in mathematics, economics, and business. As part of the business minor, I am taking marketing and this blog will focus on marketing within sports, mainly in NASCAR because I have a strong passion for the sport. As the semester goes on, details of this blog and the connections of sports to marketing will be much stronger as my knowledge increases.

In this post, I will be writing about the evolution of the diversification analysis in NASCAR. Diversification analysis is “a technique a firm uses to search for growth opportunities from among current and new products and markets (Marketing the Core, Kerin & Hartley).” This is done in current markets and current products through market penetration, new markets and current products through market development, current markets and new products through product development, and new markets and new products through diversification.

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NASCAR has had a wide range of people for its fan base, but in recent years, the fan base has been diminishing. In order to keep the fan base, they are using market penetration to try to offer old fans of the sport what they want. NASCAR created the NASCAR Fan Council of diehard fans in order to get the knowledge of what the fans wanted in NASCAR. This helps them keep their customer base and fan base.

https://www.nascar.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2017/09/fan-council-logo.jpg

NASCAR is also using market development in order to attract new people to watch the races. During the 1970s to around 2004, NASCAR was sponsored by Winston, a cigarette company. This helped them with the population at the time since smoking was accepted widespread. In 2004, they switched sponsorship to NEXTEL and Sprint which helped them grow as a sport and attract new customers because many people used Sprint. Finally, last year, they switched to Monster which shows that they are trying to attract a younger audience that may not have seen NASCAR before. To go along with the sponsorships, they started NASCAR Next. NASCAR Next is using diversity to expand the fanbase with different ethnicities and genders. Within NASCAR Next are new, diverse drivers that represent minorities in the US as well as small town drivers with great talent rather than the traditional NASCAR driver.

Product development is key to success in the racing business. In 2004, NASCAR introduced the Chase for the NEXTEL Cup and this allowed drivers to have a playoff format to race for a championship in a season rather than racing for the championship over the whole season. This upset some of the fan base, but they were trying a new way to market racing.

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This past year was the biggest year for change since 2004 because they were trying to diversify themselves. NASCAR announced a new points system where drivers could earn playoff points for each stage win and each race they won. This brought back the idea of racing for a championship over the whole season. They also introduced the aforementioned stages within the race. These stages make the drivers race throughout the entirety of the race instead of just riding around until a certain point. Also, with the stages, it allows for people to get up and go to the bathroom or visit the concession stands when they are at the race or make more time for advertisements and commercial breaks when they are watching from home.

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With NASCAR using diversification analysis, it is clear that they want to try to keep their fan base which is currently shrinking. They are not afraid to try new things, but these new changes that they make might affect the fan base that they already have.

Work Cited:

Winston Logo: https://i.redd.it/sgk4r7ehqpby.png

Sprint Cup Logo: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/thumb/9/92/Sprint_Cup.svg/1200px-Sprint_Cup.svg.png

Monster Energy Logo: https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/smart/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fmaurybrown%2Ffiles%2F2016%2F12%2Fimage2-1200x579.jpg