Perception of Service Quality and Its Relationship With Demographic Variables

Purpose:

Service quality is one of the many major elements that affects the long-term profitability of an organization (McDonald & Howland, 1998; Zeithaml, Berry, & Parasuraman, 1996). Since the primary source of revenue for sport and health-fitness clubs is membership fees (Sawyer & Smith, 1999), member retention is critical to the financial stability of health-fitness clubs. For this reason, an on-going process to evaluate service quality is necessary. The purpose of this study was to examine the service quality of a recreation center in the mid-western region of the United States using the modified version of the Service Quality Assessment Scale (SQAS: Lam, Zhang, & Jensen, 2005). The modified scale (SQAS-RC) included the following dimensions: Staff, Program, Locker Room, Workout Facility, Physical Facility, Aquatic Facility, and Child Care.

Methods:

Participants (N=161) of this study consisted of 40% male and 60% female members. Most of them were individual (38.9%) or family (29.5%) members who had been with the recreation center for three or more years (68.4%). The majority of the members (76.4%) visited the center at least three times a week and used mainly the fitness facility (57.7%) and/or aquatic facility (36.6%). Most of the participants (61.3%) were over 50 years old and visited the center at 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. (41.3%) or 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. (27.5%).

Analysis/Results:

Results of the univariate ANOVA indicated that no significant (p > .05) differences were found in Staff, Program, Locker Room, Fitness Facility, Aquatic Facility, and Child Care among different membership type, year as a member, gender, age, use frequency, area use, education, and profession. However, there were significant (p < .05) differences in Locker Room, Fitness Facility, Aquatic Facility, and Child Care among members who visited the recreation center at different times of the day. Post hoc analyses showed that members visited the center between 6:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. were less satisfied with the aforementioned areas than other members. Moreover, members went to the center during 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. were more disappointed with the locker rooms and fitness facility than those members who used them between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. or between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m.

Conclusions:

In conclusion, the recreation center should allocate more resources and personnel to locker rooms, fitness and aquatic facilities, and child care services during the hours before 10:00 a.m. or after 6:00 p.m.