Service quality of sports centers and customer loyalty

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to establish the effects of service quality of sports centers on customer loyalty and intention to adhere to exercise. Design/methodology/approach - In total, 500 questionnaires were distributed to five sports centers located in the city of Seoul, of which 472 were returned and used in the data analysis. The collected data were subjected to frequency analysis, exploratory factor analysis, a reliability test, and structural equation model analysis using SPSS 21.0 and AMOS 18.0. Findings - The results show that, first, service quality, comprising the two factors of the facilities of sports centers and instructors, positively influences customer loyalty. Second, the service quality of sports centers positively influences the intention to adhere to exercise, and, third, so does customer loyalty. Practical implications - Management needs to make more efforts to strengthen service quality, comprising facilities and instructors, in order to increase customer loyalty, represented by the sense of closeness with and attachment of customers using sports centers, as well as to increase the need for exercise. Originality/value - Previous studies on the service quality of sports centers have been limited to customer satisfaction, customer trust, reuse intention, recommendations to others, consumption behavior, and relationship commitment. Since the research on the direct relationship between service quality of sports centers and exercise adherence is still limited, this study provides data and implications relevant to the management of sports centers by investigating the relationship among service quality of sports centers, customer loyalty, and intention to adhere to exercise.