1. Development is too fast: When faced with the concept of market economy, the vast majority of practitioners who “go to the sea” could not understand it at all, let alone think about the long-term development of bowling from an industrial perspective. Take Zhengzhou as an example. Before 1996, Zhengzhou had only one bowling alley and four fairways. Two years later, that number became 29 bowling alleys with 481 lanes. The amount of change is amazing, the distribution is also concentrated in the city center, and the competition can be described as fierce.
2. The market is immature: Taking the example of Zhengzhou above, in two years, the number of fairways has become more than 100 times the original. From the perspective of consumers, it is a niche project, and coupled with the high price, the development of this project has not continued to grow rapidly for a long time, nor can it rapidly expand the market. Bowling has not become a daily sport for most consumers, which leads to the rapid development and lack of corresponding market support, the bowling industry is like a castle in the air, and it is at risk.
3. Lack of policy support and industry norms: When the bowling ball first entered the Chinese market, it was positioned as a “high-end entertainment” consumer industry by the state, and a 25% business tax was charged. This makes bowling bear heavy shackles from the initial stage of development and cannot develop healthily and normally. Of course, this also has nothing to do with the fact that bowling has always applied to become an official Olympic event. Non-Olympic events make it difficult to obtain policy and resource support.
At the same time, in the bowling equipment industry, due to the lack of relevant industry standards and the government’s lax control, many illegal traders smuggled foreign second-hand equipment, and they entered the market with a little renovation. The paradox is that some bowling ball owners are also willing to buy “second-hand goods”: on the one hand, they try to enter this high-consumption field at a lower cost to make huge profits, and on the other hand, consumers also trust so-called “foreign goods” more. This has formed a vicious circle in which the quality is not guaranteed, but consumers still recognize it, which seriously interferes with the normal market order.
