CASE BREIF 1

GOLFLOGIX
Submitted By
Prarabdh Saxena
NJIT ID : 31368973
Q1 What should GolfLogix do? Should they go with the sell
their services through the course only or through retail only?
Explore the pros and cons of the both options.
GolfLogix currently offers two solutions: The Distance Only System and
the Complete System. They have two distribution options Course only
and Retail. Below is a list of the pros and cons for each system.
Course Only
Pros
Cons
o With more and more courses
o The complete system is
adopting the system there
quite expensive to maintain
will be a higher brand value
and low adoption rates of
o Leasing the system
the complete system will
hurt the revenues
generates huge revenues
o With more courses picking
up on the system the
adoption rate will be higher

Retail
Pros
o Distance only system is a
low cost system and it will
likely be well adopted
o Possibility of having lower
equipment maintenance
costs

Cons
o The devices can not be used
without mapping the
courses and hence there is a
requirement for additional
effort to first map the course
o It will be very difficult to
increase the database of
golf courses
o They will face competition
from the golf courses itself
because for a golfer renting
the system for a nominal

price is a better option

o The USGA does not allow
electronic mapping for
handicap purposes and
hence people will not want
to own something which
they can not use for
professional golf.
As we can clearly see that the pros and cons of the Course only
approach outweigh the pros and cons of the Retail approach.
What GolfLogix should do?
They should stick to the course only approach and focus on improving
their software and making optimum use of the Garmin hardware. Try to
rope in more courses on the 30 day trial and expect them to lease the
systems. This will build them a greater brand value and improve
acceptance if they are to go retail in the future. In its incumbent stage
they should not explore with the system because even they do not
know where the system can go.
What GolfLogix did?
They did exactly that and stuck by the course only approach. Only in
2006 when the USGA lifted off the rule for electronically noted rounds
for handicap calculation it was a major turning point for them and then
they went retail and had a huge success with that.
Q2 Compare and Contrast the complete system with the
distance only system. Should GolfLogix offer the complete
system?

GolfLogix initially came up with two solutions for the golf courses, The
Distance Only System and The Complete System. The only similarity in
the two systems was that they used GPS to track the distance to the
center of the green.
Distance Only System
The distance only system is the easier of the two systems to
understand and to install on the golf courses. The only piece of data
required for this system was the GPS reading for the center of every
hole. This data could easily be collected in 2 hours and it would take
about two more hours to load the information onto the xCaddie units.
The labor cost was estimated to be around $500. As far as playing with
the distance only xCaddie system was concerned, it employed an easy
to use scrolling feature and a golfer would simply scroll to the hole that
he/she was playing, stood over the ball and get the distance to the
center of the green. For a first time user, the pro shop employee would
have to take a mere two minutes to explain the system to the golfer.
The Complete System
The Complete System was a much more complex system. In addition
to knowing just the coordinates of the center of the holes, the system
also needed to know the exact location of the tee boxes, hazards,
bunkers, etc. Some 20 to 30 GPS location readings for every hole were
required for this system to work. This took almost double the time it
took for the Distance Only System and then another 8 hours were

required to produce a digital map of the entire golf course. The labor
cost for the data acquisition of the Complete System was much more
expensive and was estimated to be at around $2000. In addition to the
labor costs, costs for the website, printing machine and the kiosk were
also incurred. All in all the Complete System was a much more
expensive system. On the playing front, the Complete Systems tells
the golfers how far they are hitting the ball, how accurate they are with
a particular club and how many putts they are taking on each hole.
This device takes the pro shop employee a lot more time to explain to
the first time golfer. In contrast to the Distance Only system, the golfer
has to input the kind of club he/she is using before hitting every shot
and then towards the end the number of putts taken to finish the hole.
After the round is over t he golfer enters the data into the kiosk and
gets a printout of the statistics of the round. This data is also made
available on the GolfLogix website, where the golfer could also view all
the data from the previous rounds. The Complete System is a useful
tool for improving the game whereas, the Distance Only system is a
tool to help amateur golfer in knowing the distance to the center of the
green.
While the complete system is far more costly than the distance only
system, it is more attractive to the core and avid golfers because of
what the complete system offers. It is a great tool to improve and

understand your game and hence GolfLogix should offer the complete
system.

Q3 How is GolfLogix positioned today in the market?

When GolfLogix started out there were a lot of conventional
competitors of the Distance Only System like the yardage markers,
sprinklers, yardage booklets and rangefinders and around 2005 there
were other high tech options like the cart mounted systems and the
PDA based systems. In contrast to the distance tracking, there were no
competitors to the Complete System for performance tracking. There
was no other way to track your score and the accuracy of shots with
each club other than making handwritten ledgers, which was obviously
a cumbersome process. It took GolfLogix a while to have a good year
financially and when it did, it took the market by a storm. In an
interview in 2013, Peter Charleston (President, GL) said The goal was,
in truth, an online golf community collaborating over their handicaps,
efforts to improve, and the love of golf a golf Facebook, five years
before Facebook launched. And that is exactly what GolfLogix did.
They put GPS tracking in the palms of golfers before smartphones did.
With the launch of BlackBerry in 2008 they were again very quick to
realize the potential smartphones had. They started developing an app
for the BlackBerry; They did suffer initially because people were
reluctant to move to the smartphones. Luckily for them most of the

golfers usually come from higher sections of the society and most of
the golfers used BlackBerrys. With smartphones they were not bound
to the hardware from Garmin and they could explore with the app as
much as they wanted. They were on the iTunes store when there were
less than 30k apps. Smartphones was a huge pivot in the success of
GolfLogix and they were right in jumping to the new platform
immediately.
Today, almost 15 years later GolfLogix is celebrated as the most
popular sports application ever with over 3 million regular users and a
database spanning over a multitude of nations across the globe. The
vast database of golf courses is the reason why it is doing so well and
people prefer using the app even though a lot of other cheaper
alternatives are there. I think it would be very safe to say that
GolfLogix is the current market leader in Golf apps.

Q4 Is their current business model sustainable? Evaluate the

possible growth areas and threats that the company faces
today.
Back in early 2000 GolfLogix stuck to a course only approach and even
though they did not have any competition, the success of their product
entirely depended on how well the course adopted their system and
passed it on to the other golfers. While the surveys said that golfers
were willing to use both the systems with fairly high acceptance rates.

The major drawback of the complete system was that it was quite a
time consuming system with the golfer having to select the club prior
to hitting every shot and the clubs accepting the system entirely
depended on the golfers adapting to the system. So that was a major
potential threat to their business model. The growth areas for them
back then would be to increase their database and to make the system
more customer friendly.
Currently, GolfLogix sells the Garmin hardware based systems as well
as the app for smartphone usage. Since it is clearly the market leader
there are no real threats to the company other than complacency. The
growth areas in the smartphone app would be to make improvised
smartwatch apps and maybe include a system which does 3D mapping
of the course and instead of just having a 2D aerial image, have an
interactive golfcourse on their smartphone app.