Golf magazines unite against survey

07 Oct 2010

Three of Australian Golf’s leading magazines have questioned a study carried out by Golf Research Australia (GRA) and distributed by Inside Golf that made extraordinary claims regarding the current readership trends of Aussie golf readers.

The controversial project, undertaken by GRA – the consumer-facing research arm of Jeff Blunden Advisory Services – and paid for by Inside Golf, involved just a 12-question survey sent to the GRA’s ’Committed Golfer Panel’- a select community of people it says represents a microcosm of golfers across Australia.

Inside Golf claimed the purpose of the paid project was to identify which of Australia’s five main golf publications – Golf Magazine, Australian Golf Digest, Golf Australia, Golfer Pacific and Inside Golf – consumers preferred to read.

The limited responses indicated Inside Golf was ’the most regularly read monthly golf magazine in Australia’ and was also ’Australia’s most popular free golf magazine’, had the ’highest percentage of regular monthly readership’, was ’the magazine most likely to be picked up the quickest by Australia’s regular golfers’ and was ’the preferred free golf magazine of the younger golfer, the regular golfer, the club golfer and the social golfer’.

But the industry’s ’big three’ publications – Golf Magazine, Golf Australia Magazine and Golfer Pacific – came together this week to question the findings, labelling them invalid, misleading and lacking credibility.

“One has to question the credibility and validity of such a survey that was paid for by Inside Golf and was promoted by the same publication on its website,” said Brendan James, editor of Golf Australia Magazine.

“Can you imagine how much credence would be paid to a similar survey of golf equipment? For example, equipment company ’A’ pays for a survey to find the most popular equipment brand. It promotes the survey on its website, then, when the results are finalised … surprise, surprise equipment company ’A’ is the overwhelming favourite of survey respondents.

“Such a scenario is laughable, just like this readership survey.”

Golfer Pacific editor Brad Clifton was quick to laugh off the paid survey too, suggesting the meaningless statistics were nothing more than a desperate ploy by a publication clearly struggling to match its rivals in the audited circulation and popularity stakes.

“If a survey of unexplained questions directed at a small database of unidentified people is what they call a credible study of today’s readership trends, then good luck to them,” Clifton said.

“When a magazine has been supporting Australian golf for more than 30 years like Golfer Pacific, reputation, readership and advertising results are never questioned.”

“It was a ridiculous study that simply cannot be taken seriously and I trust our valued clients will see it that way too.”

GOLF Magazine editor Damian Shutie was another to seriously question the credibility of the study.

“In response to the recent ’independent study commissioned by Inside Golf’— surely a contradiction in terms – reporting a range of implausible outcomes, GOLF Magazine feels duty bound to publicly respond,” Shutie said.

“Pioneering American scribe Mark Twain coined the phrase, ’Lies, damn lies and statistics.’ We suspect the writer’s famous words were penned specifically for situations like these.

“Credible and sustentative market research carries with it the onus of transparency in both the methodology of the questioning, the sample size and the demographic break up of respondents.

“Statistics can be misleading and sometimes deliberately distorted.”

“Most of Inside Golf’s findings centre on the ’free’ category, an intrinsically different market to magazine’s which carry a cover price, namely GOLF Magazine, Australian Golf Digest and Golf Australia.”

Jeff Blunden, the man behind Golf Research Australia and the controversial readership study, vigorously defended his role, claiming his research remained ’robust, clean and not biased towards any paid clients’.

“I would never manipulate the results of my research for any client – it simply would not be worth the risk,” Blunden said.

“In this case, the client wanted a better perception of what happened to magazines past the drop-off point. I can’t control what the client does with that information.”

When asked how much Inside Golf paid for the study, Blunden refused to give a figure, but suggested GRA costs varied from project to project.

“Costs differ because of what research is involved in each project. How long is a piece of string?” Blunden said.

“But my services are available to everyone and I welcome other research requests from golf publications.

“Research is research – it’s not always right necessarily. It’s up to the outside world how they take it.”

When questioned about the Committed Golfer Panel and its identity, Blunden said it was merely a group of people who opted to be included on a mail-out list for golf research projects.

“People can sign up to the Committed Golfer Panel and they opt in because they want to answer questions regularly,” he said.

Blunden admitted if he had his time over again, he probably wouldn’t have gone through with the research.

“I would certainly sit back and think twice about undertaking this project again,” Blunden said.

Discuss this article in our forums