Consulting project : recommendations for the services marketing plan do Ginásio Clube Português

• Autor(a) principal: Gonçalves, Ana Margarida Teixeira Santos de Sousa
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/16553
• topic: Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

The increasing awareness of health problems that are a consequence of obesity and a sedentary lifestyle as well as the snowballing popularity of the concern with aesthetics have been contributing to the growth and development of the Health and Fitness Industry worldwide. Portugal is no exception and, especially due to the contracting economy, new opportunities are emerging for this market. Moreover, in the past few years, motivations towards physical activity have shifted and the fitness centers have to adapt to this change in the customers’ preferences and attitudes. Ginásio Clube Português (GCP) requested a consulting project that involved the development of recommendations for the Services Marketing Plan for the upcoming year that counteracts the challenges stated above. The renowned Gaps Model of Service Quality, developed by Parasuraman et al. (1985), was used as a starting point for this analysis to support future recommendations, by assessing the gap between members’ expectations and perceptions of the service quality of GCP. The research questions that emerged to respond to the problem in hand are: (1) how do GCP members perceive the quality of this health club and what do they expect of such an institution, (2) what is the general opinion on the practice of physical activity, especially in the context of gyms and health clubs, and (3) how can GCP attract new members while retaining the existing ones. The methodology adopted to answer these questions involved the combination of three different research techniques: in-­‐depth interviews, mystery shopping and questionnaires.