Athlete perceptions of recruitment strategies in Canadian men’s basketball: A marketing perspective

Abstract

Research into student-athlete recruitment has been focused primarily on identifying the most influential factors that contribute to the college choice decision. The impact of the head coach has been recognized as the most significant factor, and the nature of their influence is the primary point of interest in this paper. The strategies and tactics used by men’s basketball coaches in Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) were considered from the perspective of elite student-athletes, as each participant drew upon their own experiences in order to identify effective recruitment practices. Eight semi-structured phone interviews were conducted with CIS men’s basketball players who made significant on-court contributions during their first year of eligibility. The similarities between the college choice process and the consumer decision process were examined, and the impact of effective recruitment strategies was discussed from a marketing standpoint. Analysis of the data revealed that influence strategies used by head coaches focus on the information processing component of the Consumer Decision Process Model (CDP Model) in order to create positive recruit perceptions. Five themes emerged from the data: familiarity, seriousness, value, honesty, and influential agents. Each of the five themes is tied to a recruitment strategy, and within each strategy a number of tactics were shown to be effective in securing recruit commitment. While the inclusion of these tactics does not guarantee student-athlete commitment, their omission from the recruitment plan often results in a poor perceived fit. Results showed that head coaches who embodied effective personal selling through the use of various recruitment tactics were most effective in securing commitment from elite Canadian student-athletes. The investigation ii of student-athlete recruitment through a marketing lens allows for business literature to be applied, as well as for the CDP Model to be used as a framework for the collection and analysis of the data. By using a sample of Canadian student-athletes attending Canadian universities, a new perspective on student-athlete recruitment is explored.