anjalicutek
Anjali Khurana
Bass Pro Shops (Outdoor World) is a privately held retailer of hunting, fishing, camping and related outdoor recreation merchandise. Bass Pro Shops is known for a large selection of hunting, fishing, and other outdoor gear.
The owner, John L. Morris, began his career in sporting goods with a fishing section in the back of a Brown Derby liquor store owned by his dad, located in Springfield on the road to Table Rock Lake and Branson, Missouri. That small fishing department sold homemade bait and worms, proving popular enough that Bass Pro Shops incorporated in 1972. These homemade baits were so popular that many people wanted the opportunity to buy these when they had returned home. Thus began the Bass Pro Shops catalog first mailed in 1974. Soon, it became the world's largest mail order sporting goods store. In 1975, to meet the burgeoning demand for Bass Pro Shops exclusive products, American Rod and Gun was established. Acting as a separate wholesaling entity ARG serves more than 7000 independently owned retail stores world wide. In 1977, Bass Pro Shops introduced the first fish-ready complete boat motor and trailer package with the Bass Tracker. In 1984, construction began on the Outdoor World Catalog Showroom in Springfield, Missouri. Big Cedar Lodge opened in 1988 on Table Rock Lake. In 1995 Bass Pro Shops Sportsman's Warehouse opened in Atlanta, GA, this is the first store outside the state of Missouri. In November 2001, the state of Missouri made use of Outdoor World's popularity as a tourist destination, and opened the Wonders of Wildlife museum next door to the store in Springfield
Bass Pro Shops Reels Them in with Sales Promotion
ohn Morris's fishing tackle business has grown from aneight-foot-Iong
display area in the back of one of his father's Brown Derby liquor
stores in
1971 to one of the largest U.S. retailing chains of outdoor sporting
goods, with 8,800 employees and estimated. annual sales of $1.25 billion
today. His pric vatelyowned company, Bass Pro Shops, is the corporate
parent of Outdoor World, a chain of retail stores headquartered in
Springfield, Missouri.
Outdoor World Stores The company's flagship Springfield store, with $72
million in annual sales, is a 300,OOO-square-foot retail operation that
in some ways resembles a mall because it includes a variety of
entertainment and service offerings as well as sporting goods. The huge
store, with 5 aquariums and a 4-story waterfall that thunders into a
64,000-gallon pool stocked with native Missouri fish, is the single
greatesttourist • attraction in Missouri. More than 4 million people
visit Outdoor World in Springfield each year-more than the number who
visit the famous Arch in St. Louis or the St. Louis Cardinals baseball
team-and about half come from outside Missouri. Some people even plan
their vacation schedules to permitatwo". or three-day visit to the
store. Eighty.percenrof visitors spend three and a half hours at the
store; 10 percent spend all day.
The Springfield Outdoor World store is departmentalized, witha wide
variety of merchandise and many choices within each line. For example,
more than 7,000 fishing lures and about 200 bows and 100 handguns are
available. Signs help customers find departments, merchandise lines, and
clothing sizes, while promotional elements direct their attention to
thernerchandise.For example, ducks appear to descend over the Tracker
Marine boat showroom, while a mounted bear and cub draw customers to the
hunting department. Squirrels mounted as fencers decorate
the workbench of a glass artist at the Wildlife Art Gallery. entrance,
while other. mounted squirrels adorn the entrance counter to the store.
Special in-store sales are announced with flyers; brochures provide maps
to the departments and show the locations of various services.
Outdoor World offers useful product information brochures to
help customers choose justthe right items for their needs, ranging from
baseball bats to sleeping bags, from camp foods to slalom water skies ..
Videotapes air near some products to demonstrate their use, while store.
displays show other products, such as camping equipment, set up as they
should be used. Salespeople are trained not only to sell the products
but to explain their proper use and maintenance to ensure that customers
get the most from their purchases, even though Outdoor World
backs)everything with a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee .
Because· Outdoor World customers often spend long hours in the store, a
number of services are available.Hemingway's Blue Water Cafe, featuring
a 29,000-gallon salt-water aquarium as well as mounted animal trophies
and African ritual masks, provides an exotic family dining experience.
Local businesspeople frequently dine there, and such notables as former
president George Bush.enjoythe cafe's biscuits and gravy, For those
looking .forsimpler fare, a McDonald's ..• is<.Jocated· .•
acrossthe. top .of the fourstory waterfall. from Hemingway's. Just past
McDonald's is the Tall Tales Barbershop, which features real "fighting
chairs" that fishers might use. on a deep-sea fishing .boat. The.
barbershop's location provides an excellent view of.the
many.outdoor.dothing choices below, and customers can have strands of
their freshly cut hair made into a fishing lure. In addition, anglers
can have a rod or reel repaired duringtheir visit, and hunters can have
their trophy animalsmountedat the award-winning .• Wildlife. Creations
and .·Taxidermy shop. Guests can also have their favorite knife
sharpened. Withhalhts customers coming from outside Missouri, rifle,
pistol, and archery ranges in the store enable customers to tryout
merchandise before taking it all the way back home. Golfers
cantestputte.~sonan indoor puttinggreen and test other clubs on an
indoor driving range within the store.
Visitors can also watch SCUBA divers hand feed goldfish to large
fresh-water game fish in one of the five in-store aquariums at Uncle
Buck's·2S0-seat auditorium on the lower level of the store. They can
visit a trout stream, see a 96-poundalligator snapping turtle (in the
hunting department), and
enjoy displays of antique fishing lures and mounted trophy fish and
animals, including a lion that seems poised to leap with claws aimed
atthe visitor's chest. Many visitors can't resist posing by the
cavernous jaws
Part Seven Promotion Decisions
of a 3,247-pound great white shark and have a friend document their
close encounter with a picture.
While the Springfield store is the operation's flagship, Bass Pro Shops
began expanding in 1995, opening 12 stores under the Outdoor World
banner, as well as 2 Sportsman's Warehouse stores and 2 World Wide
Sportsman stores. The new Outdoor World stores are typically smaller
than the Springfield store, ranging from about 100,000 to 200,000 square
feet. They have similar merchandise, decorations, and entertainment
qualities, giving them the look and feel of the flagship store, but with
a regional flavor-for example, with displays featuring local native
wildlife. However, some of the new stores' water features are smaller
and less impressive than the Springfield store's, and their wildlife
displays are less elaborate. At the Grapevine, Texas, store, for
example, life-size mounted trophy animals are typically displayed in
rows on ledges high above the merchandise racks. Bass Pro Shops also has
additional stores in the planning stages.
Direct Marketing Although Bass Pro Shops' retail store operation has
taken on a life of its own, the company's telemarketing operation sells
a high volume of merchandise from Outdoor World catalogs and thus
indirectly encourages store visits. The direct marketing operation sends
more than 34 million Bass Pro catalogs featuring some 30,000 items
around the world every year, potentially attracting more customers to
the store to tryout a product before they buy it. Indeed, Outdoor World
was originally intended to be a special store that would provide "red
carpet" treatment for catalog customers who could see and buy products
unavailable from other retailers. The 300-plus full-color pages of the
2004 Bass Pro Outdoor World Master Catalog lists more than 17,000 items,
and the company also has specialty catalogs for sportsmen's clothing,
hunting, fishing, and marine enthusiasts. About 34 percent of Bass Pro
Shops' in-store and Internet sales have some connecdon to its catalog
mailings. Since the typical Bass Pro customer is male and an avid
outdoors enthusiast who dislikes shopping and crowds, this is a customer
base ideally suited for catalog retailing.
The company employs about 500 operators who are busy every day around
the clock, answering some 170 incoming WATS lines at the catalog
operation. Thanks to a computerized distribution center, some 95 percent
of orders are filled immediately and do not have to be back-ordered, a
service record that has improved in the past several years. United
Parcel Service (UPS) and the U.S. Postal Service handle 400,000 packages
shipped to catalog customers monthly.
Special Events Special events are an integral part of marketing at
Outdoor World. The Spring Fishing Classic draws 50,000 people each of
its four days to the Springfield store. Factory representatives from the
nation's top fishing equipment manufacturers display and demonstrate the
latest products, and renowned fishing pros present seminars on their
techniques and strategies. Likewise, the Fall Hunting Classic draws a
total of about 80,000 visitors to the Springfield store over its
four-day run. In addition, the company sponsors a NASCAR race in
Georgia.
Community Service Bass.Pro founder Johnny Morris tries to keep the
Outdoor World name associated with community service and positive
conservation efforts. He pledges large sums of money to support
conservation in areas where Bass Pro conducts business, such as the
$100,000 donated for habitat and conservation work to be done near the
site ofa new Outdoor World store in Texas. He has also donated $10
million to support a new wildlife museum and aquarium next door to the
Springfield Outdoor World store.
The 400,000 packages mailed .each month by the Bass Pro catalog division
are shipped using environmentally friendly packing material. Coins
tossed into Outdoor World fountains and aquariums in Springfield are
donated to .the Ronald McDonald House, which benefits critically ill
children and their families.
Bass Pro Shops also offers safety education and hunter education classes
through its Outdoor World stores, a service appreciated by parents of
young hunters. It is also the sole corporate sponsor of Missouri's
Operation Game Thief, intended to assist authorities in enforcing game
laws and protecting game animal populations.
Bass Pro executives say their key operating philosophy has not been to
add more and more to their organization. Rather, what they add is seen
as important to outdoor enthusiasts in terms of providing them with a
new experience or element of pleasure. The key idea for the executives
seems to be the value-added notion of meeting the needs of the outdoor
enthusiast right down to locational convenience, an idea at the very
heart of the marketing conCept.
The owner, John L. Morris, began his career in sporting goods with a fishing section in the back of a Brown Derby liquor store owned by his dad, located in Springfield on the road to Table Rock Lake and Branson, Missouri. That small fishing department sold homemade bait and worms, proving popular enough that Bass Pro Shops incorporated in 1972. These homemade baits were so popular that many people wanted the opportunity to buy these when they had returned home. Thus began the Bass Pro Shops catalog first mailed in 1974. Soon, it became the world's largest mail order sporting goods store. In 1975, to meet the burgeoning demand for Bass Pro Shops exclusive products, American Rod and Gun was established. Acting as a separate wholesaling entity ARG serves more than 7000 independently owned retail stores world wide. In 1977, Bass Pro Shops introduced the first fish-ready complete boat motor and trailer package with the Bass Tracker. In 1984, construction began on the Outdoor World Catalog Showroom in Springfield, Missouri. Big Cedar Lodge opened in 1988 on Table Rock Lake. In 1995 Bass Pro Shops Sportsman's Warehouse opened in Atlanta, GA, this is the first store outside the state of Missouri. In November 2001, the state of Missouri made use of Outdoor World's popularity as a tourist destination, and opened the Wonders of Wildlife museum next door to the store in Springfield
Bass Pro Shops Reels Them in with Sales Promotion
ohn Morris's fishing tackle business has grown from aneight-foot-Iong
display area in the back of one of his father's Brown Derby liquor
stores in
1971 to one of the largest U.S. retailing chains of outdoor sporting
goods, with 8,800 employees and estimated. annual sales of $1.25 billion
today. His pric vatelyowned company, Bass Pro Shops, is the corporate
parent of Outdoor World, a chain of retail stores headquartered in
Springfield, Missouri.
Outdoor World Stores The company's flagship Springfield store, with $72
million in annual sales, is a 300,OOO-square-foot retail operation that
in some ways resembles a mall because it includes a variety of
entertainment and service offerings as well as sporting goods. The huge
store, with 5 aquariums and a 4-story waterfall that thunders into a
64,000-gallon pool stocked with native Missouri fish, is the single
greatesttourist • attraction in Missouri. More than 4 million people
visit Outdoor World in Springfield each year-more than the number who
visit the famous Arch in St. Louis or the St. Louis Cardinals baseball
team-and about half come from outside Missouri. Some people even plan
their vacation schedules to permitatwo". or three-day visit to the
store. Eighty.percenrof visitors spend three and a half hours at the
store; 10 percent spend all day.
The Springfield Outdoor World store is departmentalized, witha wide
variety of merchandise and many choices within each line. For example,
more than 7,000 fishing lures and about 200 bows and 100 handguns are
available. Signs help customers find departments, merchandise lines, and
clothing sizes, while promotional elements direct their attention to
thernerchandise.For example, ducks appear to descend over the Tracker
Marine boat showroom, while a mounted bear and cub draw customers to the
hunting department. Squirrels mounted as fencers decorate
the workbench of a glass artist at the Wildlife Art Gallery. entrance,
while other. mounted squirrels adorn the entrance counter to the store.
Special in-store sales are announced with flyers; brochures provide maps
to the departments and show the locations of various services.
Outdoor World offers useful product information brochures to
help customers choose justthe right items for their needs, ranging from
baseball bats to sleeping bags, from camp foods to slalom water skies ..
Videotapes air near some products to demonstrate their use, while store.
displays show other products, such as camping equipment, set up as they
should be used. Salespeople are trained not only to sell the products
but to explain their proper use and maintenance to ensure that customers
get the most from their purchases, even though Outdoor World
backs)everything with a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee .
Because· Outdoor World customers often spend long hours in the store, a
number of services are available.Hemingway's Blue Water Cafe, featuring
a 29,000-gallon salt-water aquarium as well as mounted animal trophies
and African ritual masks, provides an exotic family dining experience.
Local businesspeople frequently dine there, and such notables as former
president George Bush.enjoythe cafe's biscuits and gravy, For those
looking .forsimpler fare, a McDonald's ..• is<.Jocated· .•
acrossthe. top .of the fourstory waterfall. from Hemingway's. Just past
McDonald's is the Tall Tales Barbershop, which features real "fighting
chairs" that fishers might use. on a deep-sea fishing .boat. The.
barbershop's location provides an excellent view of.the
many.outdoor.dothing choices below, and customers can have strands of
their freshly cut hair made into a fishing lure. In addition, anglers
can have a rod or reel repaired duringtheir visit, and hunters can have
their trophy animalsmountedat the award-winning .• Wildlife. Creations
and .·Taxidermy shop. Guests can also have their favorite knife
sharpened. Withhalhts customers coming from outside Missouri, rifle,
pistol, and archery ranges in the store enable customers to tryout
merchandise before taking it all the way back home. Golfers
cantestputte.~sonan indoor puttinggreen and test other clubs on an
indoor driving range within the store.
Visitors can also watch SCUBA divers hand feed goldfish to large
fresh-water game fish in one of the five in-store aquariums at Uncle
Buck's·2S0-seat auditorium on the lower level of the store. They can
visit a trout stream, see a 96-poundalligator snapping turtle (in the
hunting department), and
enjoy displays of antique fishing lures and mounted trophy fish and
animals, including a lion that seems poised to leap with claws aimed
atthe visitor's chest. Many visitors can't resist posing by the
cavernous jaws
Part Seven Promotion Decisions
of a 3,247-pound great white shark and have a friend document their
close encounter with a picture.
While the Springfield store is the operation's flagship, Bass Pro Shops
began expanding in 1995, opening 12 stores under the Outdoor World
banner, as well as 2 Sportsman's Warehouse stores and 2 World Wide
Sportsman stores. The new Outdoor World stores are typically smaller
than the Springfield store, ranging from about 100,000 to 200,000 square
feet. They have similar merchandise, decorations, and entertainment
qualities, giving them the look and feel of the flagship store, but with
a regional flavor-for example, with displays featuring local native
wildlife. However, some of the new stores' water features are smaller
and less impressive than the Springfield store's, and their wildlife
displays are less elaborate. At the Grapevine, Texas, store, for
example, life-size mounted trophy animals are typically displayed in
rows on ledges high above the merchandise racks. Bass Pro Shops also has
additional stores in the planning stages.
Direct Marketing Although Bass Pro Shops' retail store operation has
taken on a life of its own, the company's telemarketing operation sells
a high volume of merchandise from Outdoor World catalogs and thus
indirectly encourages store visits. The direct marketing operation sends
more than 34 million Bass Pro catalogs featuring some 30,000 items
around the world every year, potentially attracting more customers to
the store to tryout a product before they buy it. Indeed, Outdoor World
was originally intended to be a special store that would provide "red
carpet" treatment for catalog customers who could see and buy products
unavailable from other retailers. The 300-plus full-color pages of the
2004 Bass Pro Outdoor World Master Catalog lists more than 17,000 items,
and the company also has specialty catalogs for sportsmen's clothing,
hunting, fishing, and marine enthusiasts. About 34 percent of Bass Pro
Shops' in-store and Internet sales have some connecdon to its catalog
mailings. Since the typical Bass Pro customer is male and an avid
outdoors enthusiast who dislikes shopping and crowds, this is a customer
base ideally suited for catalog retailing.
The company employs about 500 operators who are busy every day around
the clock, answering some 170 incoming WATS lines at the catalog
operation. Thanks to a computerized distribution center, some 95 percent
of orders are filled immediately and do not have to be back-ordered, a
service record that has improved in the past several years. United
Parcel Service (UPS) and the U.S. Postal Service handle 400,000 packages
shipped to catalog customers monthly.
Special Events Special events are an integral part of marketing at
Outdoor World. The Spring Fishing Classic draws 50,000 people each of
its four days to the Springfield store. Factory representatives from the
nation's top fishing equipment manufacturers display and demonstrate the
latest products, and renowned fishing pros present seminars on their
techniques and strategies. Likewise, the Fall Hunting Classic draws a
total of about 80,000 visitors to the Springfield store over its
four-day run. In addition, the company sponsors a NASCAR race in
Georgia.
Community Service Bass.Pro founder Johnny Morris tries to keep the
Outdoor World name associated with community service and positive
conservation efforts. He pledges large sums of money to support
conservation in areas where Bass Pro conducts business, such as the
$100,000 donated for habitat and conservation work to be done near the
site ofa new Outdoor World store in Texas. He has also donated $10
million to support a new wildlife museum and aquarium next door to the
Springfield Outdoor World store.
The 400,000 packages mailed .each month by the Bass Pro catalog division
are shipped using environmentally friendly packing material. Coins
tossed into Outdoor World fountains and aquariums in Springfield are
donated to .the Ronald McDonald House, which benefits critically ill
children and their families.
Bass Pro Shops also offers safety education and hunter education classes
through its Outdoor World stores, a service appreciated by parents of
young hunters. It is also the sole corporate sponsor of Missouri's
Operation Game Thief, intended to assist authorities in enforcing game
laws and protecting game animal populations.
Bass Pro executives say their key operating philosophy has not been to
add more and more to their organization. Rather, what they add is seen
as important to outdoor enthusiasts in terms of providing them with a
new experience or element of pleasure. The key idea for the executives
seems to be the value-added notion of meeting the needs of the outdoor
enthusiast right down to locational convenience, an idea at the very
heart of the marketing conCept.