Towards a reconstitution of riders’ paths and a typology of riding schools and clients

Since 2012, the evolution of the French Equestrian Federation (FFE) licensees has reversed after 70 years of continuous progression. In addition, customer versatility is intensifying. Thus the FFE policy targets riders' loyalty and the conquest of new audiences. However, the horse market is still not studied enough by marketers and there is today a real need to understand riders' motivations and profiles. This would allow equestrian managers to better promote and target their offer, retain their current customers, and attract new ones. Therefore, a quantitative survey was conducted online in France among 771 actual riders and 243 former riders, focusing on their paths, practices, and wishes. All respondents are aged 15 and over and non-owners of horse(s). Almost all French riders came to horse riding being motivated by the link with the horse. They started in a riding school (being more or less loyal to their club) but their paths lead them either to stop riding or to continue in riding schools, livery yards or at horse owner friends' home. More than half of current riders would like to become horse owners in the future. Former riders stopped riding due to lack of time, financial reasons or dissatisfaction but almost all of them (92%) would be open to practice again. For both current and former riders, Olympic disciplines is the most wished activity, followed by "taking care of a horse" and "groundwork", whereas competition is the most unwanted one. Using a hierarchical classification with R, we proposed a typology of current riders. We identified 5 types, some of whom never wish to practice competition or Olympic disciplines which are the main activities recorded in horse riding schools (90%). 6 types of horse riding school were also identified according to their offer. The results show that riding schools ‘offer is very standardized in spite of clients' different expectations leading sometimes to dropping out of horse riding. These results offer an opportunity for equestrian managers to target their activities according to their clients' needs and expectations, in particular making better use of riders' desire to create links with horses.