By He Dongxian

The living consumption of Chinese women has been changing tremendously in recent years. The consumption pattern has transformed from subsistence to development and enjoyment. Urban women are gradually becoming the main force of sport and recreation consumption.

Meanwhile, China's sport industry is speeding up with an annual growth rate of over 20 percent. In economically developed regions, the added value has accounted for 0.7 percent of local GDP. The structure of sport industry also has been changed significantly. Sport service is developing fast, and the situation that mainly counted on sport products has been altered; development space of relevant industries has also been expanded. Women's role as the main force of sports consumption is clear enough now.

Female Sports population keeps growing

Investigation Report on the Current Mass Sports of China, issued by General Administration of Sport at the end of 2002, is the latest as well as the most authoritative statistical report about sports population. According to the statistics of the time (up to 2001), the sports population of China took up 33.9 percent of the total population aged between 7 and 70. Male account for 56.6 percent and female account for 43.4 percent of total sports population respectively. Female sports population accounts for 15.8 percent of the total female population.

From the statistics, the proportion of female sports population is lower than male sports population. The number of female sports population is growing obviously in the past 5 years along with the development of urban and rural economy, as well as the changes of people's consumption idea. The Report mentioned that fitness aerobics is the widest spread sport game among urban and rural residents. Now sport activities aimed at entertainment and health have become the foundation of the increase of female sports population, and this is much clearer in relatively developed areas.

The increase of female sports population is mainly embodied by items such as swimming, badminton, tennis, fitness and aerobics, yoga, as well as leisure outdoor activities.

The result of an investigation named "2005 Questionnaire on the life quality of Chinese women" shows that women have a stronger awareness of fitness in general, and 82.6 percent women take exercises aperiodically. The number of female members is nearly 60 percent in the fitness club where the journalist himself engages in, more than the number of male members. One of a big fitness-center chain in Beijing once made a statistics, showing that female members account for 54 percent while male members take up the rest 46 percent. Similar situation happens in some other regions.

Sports consumption shows "Women's Power"

Despite that the total female sports population might be less than male, and the number of sport items that female had attend is less than that of male, women's power as sport consumers absolutely can not be ignored.
Except for the strong awareness of fitness of women, "Questionnaire on the life quality of Chinese women" also revealed that women's expenditure in fitness ranks No. 4 in women's consumption expenditure. It follows garment & adornment, communication and travel (Garment & adornment and travel also may be related to sports consumption). This shows from another angle that women are more likely to spend on sports consumption.

The first is women's attitude toward sports consumption. Health and fitness could be part of women's fashion activities at the same time with being a sport activity. A female in Hangzhou who has ever bought annual cards in three fitness centers explained: One important reason that leads to female members in excess of male members in fitness centers is that women are more likely to be fashionable. In certain period, it is a kind of fashion to take exercises in fitness centers. Naturally, lots of women are attracted."

Besides, except for health, pursuing body fitness has become an impetus as well as a reason for women's joining in sports consumption. Everyone pursues for beauty, and sport activities can bring about beautiful feeling to women. So many women may attend some sport activities within their capacity. After Spring Festival, the fitness dancing of several fitness centers in Haerbin were fairly hot; slogans like "telephone appointment", "Free Experience", and "Member Surprise" attracted not a few customers.

Moreover, women's consumption behavior decides that women's consumption is much easier to tend to elite and branding. Compared with male, women give more concern to brand and pattern except for function and practicability when choosing sport garments or other sport products. A lady from Beijing, who is engaged in IT industry, said that she likes to turn consumption in kind into elite consumption. She said: "Brands are not always the best. But I can find confidence and happiness from the sport brands that fit for me."

Women's sports consumption has a bright future

Women's role as the main force of sports consumption wasn't paid enough attention in traditional sport industry. Take sport products for example, all sport products were "fit for both men and women". Even if in late 1990s, manufacturers merely provided women with smaller size sport products. However, along with the gradual increase of women's sports consumption, women have become a colony that could not be ignored in sport product market. Women's sport garments that combine fashionable factors are considered to have a good performance in the market. Sport manufacturers from all over the world are courting women market.
 
Domestic sport product manufacturers are slightly inferior to the worldwide famous manufacturers in both the R&D and marketing strategy; and the gap of sport service industry also needs filling. A task for China's sport industry now is how to produce more tailored products for women consumers according to their consumption needs and consumption character.