The purpose of this study is to propose a plan to promote business management through comparative analysis of service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty of public and private sport facilities and by identifying proper business areas f...
The purpose of this study is to propose a plan to promote business management through comparative analysis of service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty of public and private sport facilities and by identifying proper business areas for each facility.
In order to achieve this purpose, subjects were selected from customers who worked out at public and private sport facilities in Seoul, Gyeonggi, and Incheon areas by using the ratified cluster random sampling among probability sampling methods. Each of 12 sport facilities(6 public and 6 private facilities) was assigned 100 copies of the questionnaire, totalling 1,200 copies. All 1,200 copies were collected, of which 1,177 copies(98.05%) were actually used in this study and the other 23 copies(1.95%) were excluded due to their incompleteness or insincerity.
The questionnaire was categorized into service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty factors. It was prepared by modifying and complementing those used by J. Y. Ryu(2005), I. H. Park(2005) and C. W. Park(2004) for the service quality factor; N. C. Kim(2006), C. M. Kim(2006) and Y. J. Jun(2004) for the customer satisfaction factor; and H. J. Yang(2006) and S. K. Lee(2005) for the customer loyalty factor. To prove validity and reliability of the questionnaire, Cronbach's α was measured. The Cronbach's α coefficients were ranged from .862 to .934, proving that the questionnaire was valid and reliable.
For statistic analysis of the data, factor analysis, descriptive statistics, independent t-test, Pearson product moment coefficient, multiple regression were performed using SPSS version 14.0 for Windows. Delphi analysis that took the opinions from a group of 15 experts(5 public sport facility related experts, 5 private sport facility related experts, and 5 sport marketing experts and professors) into consideration reached the following conclusions:
First, the customer satisfaction was attributed mostly to price satisfaction for the public sport facility while it was attributed remarkably to trainer satisfaction for the private sport facility.
Second, there was no significant difference in the service quality between public and private sport facilities, even though the public sport facility customers appeared to be more willing to re-register to the facility than those of the private sport facility.
Third, for both public and private sport facilities, the customer satisfaction in general was affected by service quality.
Fourth, for both public and private sport facilities, it appeared that better service quality and higher customer satisfaction made the customers more willing to re-register to the corresponding facility and/or recommending it to others.
In conclusion, as the results of Delphi analysis for public and private sport facilities, several problems regarding human resources management were revealed in both facilities such as absence of the management specialized in sports and shortage of professional trainers. In order to promote the sport business management, it is necessary to recruit competent professional trainers and the staff specialized in sport facility management and establish institutional supports including tax benefits, government aids and regulatory instruments.