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立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
1. Introduction
India is a developing country with economic growth of 7.5% (Conference, 2015) and a population of 1.2 billion (Government of India, 2011). In olden days, very few people in India thinks about participating in a running event of 5 km, 10 km, 21 km or 42.2 km and during those period people primarily focused on fitness activities like walking, yoga and gymnastics. But today amateur running is seeing a great boom and almost every cities hosting a running event for promotions with local running groups growing up exponentially all over the geography. The first major running event was “The Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon” held in 2004 and it is now more than ten years old, drawing international athletes as well. Fund generated from this single event towards charity alone reached 1.3 billion rupees (SC Marathon, 2015) till date.
While city marathon continues to grow, another breed of running events have begun to emerge in the country and runners seems to be lapping up all the actions. Today, the calendar for running events includes various type of fields like the Run of Kutch, Himalayan Crossing - Terrain Running, Mizoram Ultra and “The High – Ladakh” etc. Young, adventure and fitness enthusiasts from various cities have been looking for these kind of opportunities to run on difficult terrains and enjoy the scenic beauty at the same time.
Running industry is really huge and it consists of various products and services to complement the entire eco-system. Though it looks like the runner just need a pair of shoes to start running, once they get in ends up with spending a lot for this. Primary expenses were associated with shoes, apparels , watches GPS enabled like Garmin, water bottle, hat, sun glasses, gels/ointments, music, nutrional supplements, race entry fees, souvenir race t-shirt, running event fees and many more.
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國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
1.1. Running Events
The worldwide growth in the running events from 2009 to 2014 was 13.25%. If we take a closer look by demographics, the developing countries in Asia has an accelerating growth.
Refer to the figure 1. Marathon growth by nations for detail breakup. India has a promising growth of 154% (Research: Marathon Performance Across Nations, 2015) with increase in participation from women runners as well.
Source: (RunRepeat, 2015)
Figure 1: Marathon Growth by Nations
The recent increase in participation is primarily associated with India’s economic growth and the major participants are from the comfortable economic means. They tend to primarily work in the information technology industry attributed with high stress work environment and hence looking for ways to keep them healthy and more productive. People are getting more awareness about their physical fitness, obesity and want to reduce the extra fat in natural way.
Increase in running events leads to new born of running clubs in every locality to help, mentor and train the newcomers to put themselves into the race events.
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國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
In India, more than half of the running events were happening in major metro cities like Chennai, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad etc. The year on year increase in metro cities were around 65% as shown in the figure.2 and that explains the upper middle class people’s interest towards marathon race participation. From the figure 2. India Marathon Statistics, it is obvious that southern part of India is dominating and the primary reason associated with that is major I.T companies were operating from southern part of the country.
Source: Organized by this study
Figure 2: India Marathon Statistics
1.2. Reasons to Run
It is more evident that the importance of running has been realized from the increase in number of people signing up for Marathons events. There are various other reasons to participate and start running on daily basis. Some of the key factors (Ravi, 2014) are mentioned below
1.2.1. Healthier Life Style
Running is the start of healthier life style. It helps you to get more exercise, stay fit and lose weight. People who care more about their fitness seeks natural way to burn the fat and running is the ideal choice for them to start with. Training to run a Marathon can help to keep
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the promise of healthier living style.
1.2.2. Challenge Oneself
There are several moments when people doubt on their own capabilities. Hence when they get into marathon events, it is more likely to compete themselves to run the next one by beating their own time. This will make runners to stay forever in marathon and keeps participating in more events by improving individual’s scorecard.
1.2.3. Make Friends
Joining a running club is the best way to connect with people from different background who shares the same goals and provides an excellent opportunity to network with localities effectively. They will stay connected forever and become a buddy for life as there is a common orientation between the members of the club.
1.2.4. Marathon Medals
People gets sense of achievement when they cross the finish line at the marathon race and secure medal for completion. Since participation requires tremendous training effort, completion will give a satisfaction for all the hard work and keep up the spirits.
1.2.5. Give Back Society
Most of the marathon events are primarily associated with a cause, hence participating in any such event will give the runners a pride feeling and a sense of satisfaction. The satisfaction arises from the fact that they are giving back to the society in one way or another. Recent events are associated with promoting health awareness, protecting natural resources etc.
1.2.6. Time of Oneself
During the practice runners start devoting more time for themselves. Their attitude or habit towards personal fitness and hygiene improves a lot. It also helps to relieve the daily routine stress and to lead an active lifestyle.
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Around 380 Marathon events per year happening in India (Calendar , 2015) as explained in Figure 2. Out of which there are ten world class events that attract even international athletes and the total participation in single race event may reach up to 40,000+. Table 1. Marathon Class Breakup gives the categorized view of the yearly event and the participants it attracts.
Table 1: Marathon Class Breakup
Source: Organized by this study, Based on (Calendar , 2015)
Event Promotion is a key challenge for any of these major events. While organizing an event, 25% (Be Money Aware Blog, 2015) of the cost goes towards registration and market promotion. There are too many channels associated with event promotion to achieve a broad reach of participants and Facebook/FM Radio are primarily used. Almost all the running clubs have a profile page in Facebook and this page helps for effective digital marketing to reach the right audience with very minimal effort. FM Radio helps to create the awareness and brand for the events in the society and add value for the corporate sponsors. Apart from this, traditional media like newspaper, TV, Email were also used for maximum penetration. Each event organizers have their own website for online registration and work with multiple vendors. Local running clubs are another key partner for success criteria, since it has the target customer base and helps them to encourage in participating such events. In the digital world, local running clubs are getting replaced by virtual running groups that are created through Facebook.
Category Approx. Count Participants Range
World Class Events 10 25,000 - 45,000
Premium Events 50 10,000-25000
Standard Event 130 5,000-10,000
Local Event 190 1000-5000
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國立 政 治 大 學