whose goal was to provide insight
into the minds of worldwide
consumers. The first volume of the
Consumer Snapshot was released in
early 2011.
“Designing a study that a man or
woman in the street could fill in
requires quite different techniques to
designing a survey for spa managers
and directors,” notes McIlheney,
continuing, “certainly no one would
have guessed that within a decade
we would have nine volumes
surveying over 12,000 people in the
U.S. and beyond.”
While the ISPA U.S. Spa Industry
Study is designed to provide
consistent, trackable metrics across
many years, each volume of the
Consumer Snapshot Initiative captures
a different angle of the consumer
experience. Past volumes have studied
spa-goers vs. non-spa-goers, the prefer-
ences and habits of male spa-goers,
social media usage and millennials,
among other topics. Each volume
surveys a representative sample of the
population—including both spa-goers
and non-spa-goers, Americans and
non-Americans, depending on the
nature of that year’s Snapshot.
“That first Snapshot showed us
how many men were going,” recalls
McNees. Indeed, this was the most
surprising finding of the first volume:
although a greater percentage of spa-
goers were women (53.8 percent
versus 46.2 percent of men), male spa-
goers more frequently visited
five or more times over the past 12
months (59 percent of male spa-goers
versus 41 percent of female spa-goers).
“There were a lot of assumptions
and anecdotes from members about
that, but we wanted to quantify it,”
McNees adds. In essence, this has
become the raison d’etre of the
Consumer Snapshot Initiative: to apply
analytical rigor to the assumptions
that spa leaders make about their
guests.
continuous growth
For two decades now, the ISPA U.S.
Spa Industry Study has charted the
growth of the industry, although this
easily might not have been the case:
the ISPA U.S. Spa Industry Study was
not originally envisioned as a yearly
endeavor.
coverS over the yeArS
SEPtEmbEr
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