Vol.4 No.3 2012

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Research paper : Designing products and services based on understanding human cognitive behavior (M. Akamatsu et al.)−149−Synthesiology - English edition Vol.4 No.3 (2012) In the service that provides sports entertainment, it is important first to get people to the ballpark or the soccer stadium, and the next issue is what kind of experience can be given there. People who come to watch sports include those who come to the stadium for the first time and those who attend frequently or the repeaters. Even a repeater had the first time when he/she attended the game. Before that, the person most likely watched sports on television, and turned into a repeated game goer through various information and experiences. The objective of the research was to clarify the structure of the shift or how a sports watcher turned into a repeater.We investigated the critical parameters that determined how the repeater of baseball game watching enjoyed the baseball game. First was the objective and enjoyment of going to the stadium, second was the degree of information exchange about the baseball team with the surrounding people, third was the strong feeling of support as a team fan at the games, and fourth was the personality (behavioral characteristics) of the person. From this perspective, 30 elite monitor candidates were selected based on the response to the Internet questionnaire survey of about 1,000 members of the baseball team fan club. Five males and five females were selected from the three enjoyment types including “sports watching is my personal enjoyment”, “it is enjoyment for the entire family”, and “it is enjoyable but I don’t really want to become a hardcore fan”. These three types were found from the cluster analysis of the questionnaire survey. Each group contained differing critical parameters. Group interview was held with 30 people, and they were mapped on the two-dimensional graph composed of the axis for how they enjoy the game (from people who enjoy the game itself to those who enjoy cheering for the team) and the axis of fan maturity (from hardcore who goes to fan service events as well as the games, to those who love baseball but have no time to watch the games). Then, nine people were selected as elite monitors, making sure there were no biases. The elite monitors were asked to watch the games at the stadium, and the behavior of the monitors, the progress of the game, and the atmosphere of the spectators’ stands were recorded on the video. Heart rate of the monitor was also recorded as the physiological measure to see the state of physical excitement during the game. Retrospective interview was done, and the feelings they had during the games were extracted as the monitor watched the video (Fig. 2). Also, other sports watching behavior the elite monitors engaged in the past were surveyed through the interview.From this survey, the stages of the fan were categorized into the following three: pre-fan who “knows/doesn’t know baseball but is not interested in professional baseball games”, fan who “has become fond of the team and goes to watch the game at the stadium”, and the repeater who “goes to the games enthusiastically, has his/her own watching style, and consciously makes time to go to the games” (Fig. 3). The motives that were given for shifting from pre-fan to fan included the introduction of a star player, the expectation for league victory, and the amazement at the cheering fans at the game that one happened to attend. The motives for shifting from fan to repeater were the sense of unity with the other spectators at the stadium that does not get communicated through TV, the accumulation of detailed knowledge about the players, and the aquisition of companions such as family or friends with whom one can watch the games together. There were several paths for the shifts, and there were cases whereby “the person who did not know anything Fig. 2 Interview to baseball fans after game watching at the stadium

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