why freeskiing?

So some consumers put on flashy clothes and decide to try some insane tricks on skis. How can this be an insightful topic for serious research?

First of all, freeskiing is significantly transforming the skiing industry. Although almost all industry players have responded with new product lines and significant investments, few have a precise strategy but rather feel a vague obligation “to do something”. Here, marketing research needs to respond, provide insight and elaborate viable strategies.

But the significance of the freeskiing revolution goes much further: Freeskiing is in many ways a prime example for postmodern reconfiguration of consumers and producers, the body and the material, routine and risk, media practices and sport, the virtual and the very real. Freeskiing, therefore, is a nexus: A nexus of doings and sayings, of the material and the visual, of people and of organizations.

This nexus is truly multi-dimensional: Misty-flips and buttered tricks, jib sessions and big mountain contests, pros and newbies, baggy pants and massive goggles, ski-movies and photo-ops, step-up kickers and rainbow rails, sound systems and online discussions, praying for powder and breaking collarbones are all interwoven into this powerful amalgam called freeskiing. 

Freeskiers, I argue, should be understood as an avant-garde, crossing boundaries and transforming established practices, driven by a curious passion or devotion. It seems a quest not just for economic success, group status or gold medals, but something more abstract, even sacral, yet at the same time more real: Cruising through knee-deep powder on a sun-light morning in pristine mountains.