In Switzerland, a rich country that tends to set trends in consumer behavior, people aged between 60 and 69 are sportier than those between the ages of 30 and 59, according to the recently released Mach Consumer 2005 study. The relative availability of free time and a desire to stay in shape after retirement are no doubt important factors that explain this interesting fact, indicating that seniors should be taken more seriously by the sporting goods companies.
An estimated 42 percent of the seniors up to the age of 69 practice sport. The other important age group goes from the age of 14 to 19, where one-third of the population engage in sport, mostly because of the school curriculum, but between the ages of 20 and 59, only one-third of the Swiss people do it. Evidently, many drop out only because they work too much.
Overall, the share of the total population that practices no sports at all or very rarely after infancy has fallen to 25 percent from 28 percent in 2001, when WEMF conducted its previous Mach Consumer survey. A good 41 percent practice regularly -14.9 percent almost everyday and 26.6 percent every 2-3 days – as compared to 38 percent four years earlier.
Much of the growth in sports participation is due to a larger number of women, particularly in the age groups from 14 to 19 and from 60 to 79 years. Across all age groups, 14.0 percent of the women now practice sport almost daily, and 26.0 percent every 2-3 days. They tend to practice a greater variety of sports, but they continue to focus on fitness/aerobics, ice skating, horse-riding, swimming, sledding, dance, hiking and yoga.
In general, the study pinpoints skateboarding, golf, snowboarding and long-distance running among the sports that have grown the most over the past four years. Cross-country ski, windsurfing, mountain biking, orienteering and gymnastics have gone down (for more information contact carine.lins@wemf.ch).
