Cross Country Market Research Strategy

Cross Country Market Research Strategy

Winter 2020/2021

The cross country ski and snowshoe industry has partnered with Snow Sports Insights (SSI), a new organization designed specifically to use research to build a clear view of the cross-country and snowshoe market.  The information gathered would help ski areas, suppliers, retailers, and media understand what is happening in the market from all perspectives. In addition to one-off reports on each study listed below, SSI will produce an intelligence report on the cross-country and snowshoe market that will triangulate data collected in the studies and be released in August each year.

SSI’s lead researcher is Kelly Davis, a 12 year veteran of snow sports research and a 3 year consultant with CCSAA. 

Participation – Analysis and trending of participation as reported by the Physical Activity Council. This data, while spurious shows overall participation trends in cross country over time. This data can be parsed by age, gender, geographic location, ethnicity, and frequency of participation.

Trail Visits – SSI will use the 4 years of trail visit data collected by CCSAA.  This data is primary sourced and collected at the end of each season.  The number of total trail visits is projected from the sample of respondents. Additionally, collect data provides insights into rental gear, grooming, food and beverage, retail, snow making, and other trends.

Retail Panel –Monthly from November to April, a sample of retailers will be surveyed about sales trends. This includes best sellers, trends by brand, trends in equipment sales. The data is self-reported by the retailer. This data is analyzed by SSI and used to report the state of the market in aggregate. Short of running POS data studies, these results are the best way to keep a finger on the current pulse of the market. Collecting this data allows us a view into the market within just a few weeks lag rather than months and it is cross country specific.

Supplier Panel – Happening twice per season in January and April to monitor trends on the supply side of the market and to measure D to C trends. This would include self-reported views of trends from the suppliers’ perspectives, trends in manufacturing and supply chains, and ordering trends.

Consumer Trends – SSI will build a consumer panel to use to keep members informed about trends from the consumers’ perspective. Additionally, we are building out our consumer research capabilities to offer retailers and brands the opportunity to use this consumer panel to measure interest in new products, gather data on consumer preferences, and use it to gather feedback from consumers’ perspectives overall.

Wholesale Market Data – Independent study of supplier’s sales into retail including units and dollars in each category of cross-country hard goods.

For more information contact Kelly Davis.