The Triathlon sport consumer. A segmentation proposal

In the last decades, triathlon has gained globally an increased popularity. This sport is now a worldwide diffused discipline: triathletes can choose between a wide number of challenges and events, taking place in different corners of the world. The exponential growth of this sport has led to an increasingly relevant weight of triathlon in economic terms: in 2014, revenues of triathlon industry were estimated in $ 2.8 billion only in the United States (Triathlon Business International, 2015). The phenomenon started being increasingly studied by marketing and management research. From a consumer behaviour point of view, triathlon is a quite underresearched topic is related to triathletes’ motivational analysis. Particularly relevant, also in practical terms, appears motivation analysis aimed at identifying the characteristics of individuals performing this peculiar sport discipline. Few works have applied segmentation to the triathlon sport context, while in other sport contexts segmentation was instead applied in a wider number of contributions. The present research provides an additional point of view on triathlon athletes by providing a segmentation with respect to international triathlon events. Results provide insights both on athletes’ inner characteristics, trigger some considerations about how to harness differences and peculiarities of different athletes, from the point of view of sport event managing organizations. A discussion of touristic implications of triathlon sport events is also provided.