Are Too Many Choices a Bad Thing?

Golf marketing is extremely competitive and manufacturers are always in a mad rush to showcase their new product that will help in a golfer’s never-ending quest for game improvement. But is it possible that golf club manufacturers are overwhelming consumers with too many new products each year? Let me explain my concern…

Drivers are the clubs that are most associated with distance and golfers (especially less-skilled players) tend to equate long drives to lower scores. Manufacturers like TaylorMade do a great job of hitting on this notion in their marketing pieces. They feature data from test results to show how many extra yards of distance can be delivered from the latest in their line of drivers.

To their credit, TaylorMade isn’t just throwing random data out to consumers. They have invested heavily in their research and development teams over the years and their work has produced clubs that are innovative and produce big results. I strongly encourage you to visit this timeline of TaylorMade’s developments and history. It’s very entertaining and gives great details about some of TaylorMade’s more prominent developments, including the first metal driver.

For many years, golf manufactures showcased their new products at two distinct periods: in the springtime, just before the warmer weather arrives, and at Christmas. These days, I’m noticing that newly-developed clubs are being introduced at other parts of the year – and TaylorMade is leading the surge. The observation came to me when I recently viewed this ad for TaylorMade’s JetSpeed series:

The JetSpeed driver (and accompanying fairway woods and rescue clubs) was announced just weeks after TaylorMade’s SLDR driver was introduced. In total, TaylorMade has introduced and marketed 4 new drivers in 2014. Each driver has multiple variations that range from $300 to $600. That’s a lot of specifications for consumers to consider. More and more amateur golfers are taking to social media and other online venues to vent their frustration with TaylorMade’s pace. These complaints include general confusion to disappointment in the fact that the technology found in last year’s expensive purchase has already been topped.

Previous models are now advertised at half of their original costs and the market for preowned golf clubs is thriving more each year. Will TaylorMade keep up its high pace of production? As a marketer, I sure hope so. I’d like to see more cool stuff like this: