Determining the Factors That Influence Consumers in Choosing a Fitness Cub in Australia - Case Study Example

Determining the factors that influence consumers in choosing a fitness club in Australia Name University Affiliation Research problem definition The contemporary global health statistics reveal that sedentary habits within the population are raising concern because of the problems arising out of it. The two common health epidemic caused by the sedentary behavior are Obesity and diabetes. These two health disorders have proved to be a threat to the health of the current world population (Betterhealth.vic.gov.au, 2014). To counter this challenge, the health providers and other stakeholders have increased campaigns to create awareness among the population of the need to monitor their health behavior. Studies have indicated that most people have now the intention or have the interest of managing their health through changing their eating habits and carrying out physical exercises (Percival, 2014). Unlike the past where we had few and primitive avenues to carry out physical fitness, the modern societies have various recreation centers and sophisticated equipments that have been scientifically designed to assist in the body fitness (Health.gov.au, 2014). Given the increase in population’s awareness of the importance of involving in health behaviors, it is quite important that the healthcare providers and body fitness professionals understand how people work to alter their health behaviors. The increase in the sedentary behavior in the current days is much attributed to the peoples’ lifestyle. The peoples’ life style has greatly changed as compared to the later generations (Allen, 2014). Among the given factors that have contributed to much sedentary or inactive behaviors in the society is, the advancement in technology. Most of the manual work and duties nowadays in our homes or in offices are done by the use of the machines (Betterhealth.vic.gov.au, 2014). People who operate these devices normally do it when they are seated. Therefore, people spend their work hours in sedentary positions as they carry out their duties. This has caused many individuals to add more weight to the bodies and even develop obesity because of the inactive nature of their work (Percival, 2014). Moreover, the new technological devices that are in homes such as television make people to spend hours sitting as they watch movies or news (Allen, 2014). They have really changed the lifestyles of individuals from active to inactive form; thus, giving birth to health disorders such as obesity and diabetes. However, people have become aware that their lifestyles have changed and the changes pose health risks to their life. Most of these informed people are now trying to engage in activities that would make them to be more active (Health.gov.au, 2014). They do this by enrolling in health fitness centers, recreation centers and gyms to be taking physical exercises for their body fitness (Betterhealth.vic.gov.au, 2014). In Australia, health fitness is a discipline on its own because people train in colleges to get certificates or diplomas to qualify as health fitness professionals. Therefore, people whom intent to take physical fitness activities gets in touch with these professionals so that they can guide them on where and how to do it (Research digest, 2012). However, it becomes a challenge for the consumers to choose the best health fitness clubs or centers in Australia because they are all over and each center claims to be offering the best services. Thus, the consumers become confused on the criteria to consider before settling on one particular center that would offer them satisfactory fitness services (Research digest, 2012). Most of them tend to base their decisions on charges among the clubs. While others base their decisions on the friends’ referrals. Thus, this research aims at finding out the actual factors that ought to be put in mind when deciding on which club to join by those seeking fitness services. Research questions The common issue facing the Australians who want to enroll in health fitness clubs is how would they chose the best centers that would enable them to attain their goals in a fast, easy and affordable way. This research therefore would answer the following questions. a) What kinds of fitness services that are commonly offered in most of these fitness clubs? b) What are the qualifications of the people who lead the physical fitness exercises in these centers? c) What kind of fitness equipments available in most of these fitness centers? d) Which kind of internal and external environment the fitness centers offer to the clients? e) What duration fitness package that are offered to customers In Australia, most of the health fitness clubs offer a variety of fitness exercises claimed to be safe and beneficiary to the consumers. However, some studies have revealed that some exercises given to the clients are unnecessary and sometimes harmful to the users (Betterhealth.vic.gov.au, 2014). This emanates from the fact that some of the health fitness leaders in most of these fitness gyms are unqualified. According to the Australia fitness professional code of conducts, a fitness center operator must have gone through training and qualified with a certificate r a diploma (Research digest, 2012). They are also taken through regular workshops to train them on issues such as first aid, technological adjustments, maintenance of the centers and many more to offer credible services. When unqualified individual is found carrying out tasks that are meant for those professionals, they can be sued in court because of risking the lives of others people (Betterhealth.vic.gov.au, 2014). A good health fitness facility should provide safe environment for the customers and professional personnel who supervise them. Therefore, the citizen who decide to seek the outdoor activities for their body fitness from these centers before they enroll, they should carry out a good research to find out which clubs would do them better. Choosing the right facility is a key to sticking with a best program (Mathews, Lindner, &Nicholas, 2007). The right facilities should have modern equipments that are scientifically designed so that when the clients use them, they find them to be safe and easy to operate. The best clubs are those that have consistent fitness programs hat go for a specified duration to ensure that the clients attain their goals. Research objectives The objectives of this research are: a) To determine if all Australians who go for the physical fitness programs achieve their aims. b) To determine of all of the fitness facilities available in Australia are of the same class or have similar equipments. c) To find out if both young and old, female and male individuals use the same equipments in these centers. d) To find out the terms of service different centers have when offering services to their clients. e) To determine if all of the centers are operated by the qualified fitness professionals. f) To find out the differences in charges that the clubs charge for the services they offer. Research Hypothesis H1- Consumers will choose clubs that offer affordable charges for the services. Most of the consumer population are the youth, and the youth do not have good sources of income that can use to pay in expensive clubs, therefore, prices charged by the clubs is among the main determining factors that consumers consider when choosing the clubs to join. H2- Most consumers will go for the clubs that are near their residential homes. Most of the people would prefer to join the nearest clubs to their places of residence just because of the conveniences purposes. This is because they can attend the programs easily and regularly unlike when the clubs are too far from where they stay. H3- Most of the Australians will not consider the qualifications of the people who operate the health fitness centers. The most important thing is just if the operators guide them on how to take their exercises. H4-Most of the consumers will not question on what kind of physical exercises they are exposed to in these centers. They do not bother to know what kind of physical activities would help them achieve their goals easily. H5- Most of the Austrian consumers will not bother about the kind of the environment a recreation or fitness facility need to offer. They just enroll without gauging the environment where these facilities are located. H6- Some of the clubs will use the same tools and equipments to serve both genders and ages. The physical fitness equipments are designed to fit certain age and gender, but because of ignorance, the consumers accept to use any available equipment offered by the centers. Type of study Research design This study would employ a survey as a method of research design. When carrying out a survey exercise, each respondent be mailed a survey form that they would be required to complete voluntarily and pass it back to the researcher after filling it (Health.gov.au, 2014). This survey forms would include about twenty-five questions. These questions would cover the issues to do with physical fitness practice and behaviors in Australia (Health.gov.au, 2014). Some of the questions would have multiple options and others would need brief explanations by the respondents. The respondents would be given around one week to fill their forms and mail them back to the researchers’ center Primary and secondary data requirements This research would mainly use the primary data collected from the survey. Secondary data was obtained from the literature review that was done because of the limited time. Some of the sources of the secondary data included; journal articles, books, newspapers, reports f the previous studies, reports from health centers and magazines. The target population and the sample size The population targeted for this study would be the Australian citizens with the minimum age of 15 years. The population below 15 would be avoided because most of tem have no idea about physical fitness exercises thus, the do not go in fitness centers. A large percentage of the sample size would be taking from the youth from 18 to 40 year, while the aged individuals who are above forty years would have less percentage. This targeted sample size is appropriate in carrying out good research because it is an informed population that has read about the issues to do with Obesity and Diabetes (Swinburn, 2011). Most people in this population have experienced or seen the consequences of lack of physical exercises. Others have seen the importance of enrolling in gyms and other recreations centers hence; they have first hand information concerning the study topic. In addition, most of the individuals in this population size are anxious to know the ways they can use to cut down their weight and the best physical exercises they can be offered by fitness clubs to achieve their intended weight. To come up with the quality study, the sample will comprise of individuals from different parts of Australia and the total size of the sample population would be approximately 2000 individuals. Sampling plan and data collection The sampling exercise would use the convenient, quota and judgment sampling. In convenient sampling would be needed where the researcher would want to find the information from the workers who work in the same locality or company (Research digest, 2012). It would also apply to the students in colleges who are found at a central point. Quota sampling would apply where the researcher wants to include a small number of young individuals aged 15 to 18 years. It would help to limit the number of the young individuals in the sample size because the study targeted a large percentage of the older individuals who have good knowledge of the matters to do with health fitness. On the other hand, judgment sampling would also be appropriate since the data required is supposed to be neither visitors nor tourists but from Australian citizens only (Mathews, Lindner, &Nicholas, 2007). All these sampling techniques would be employed to come up with a sample size that would give quality data that would be used to draw credible conclusions. The sampling exercise would also consider the balance of geographical regions where these individuals live to ensure that each region in Australia is represented. Specific research instruments The survey has been designed to accommodate about 2000 individuals all of them having attained the age of 15 years and above and live in different parts of Australia. This population would give the data for the study. The survey forms would be distributed to the respondents through mails where the respondents would react on the questions in those forms. The researcher would notify the respondents that the participation in this exercise is not mandatory but is voluntary. The researcher would give the respondent a time of about a week to post back the survey form after answering the questions. The questions on the survey form would be of different forms. Some would be open-ended and others closed-ended question. The respondent would be required to respondent at least to all the questions. The use of both kinds of questions would allow the respondent to explain their views and experiences on matters concerning health fitness (Elwell, Powell, Wordsworth, & Cummins, 2014). The questions in the survey forms would be revised thoroughly to ensure that they suit both genders because the sample population is of mixed gender. To ensure quality data, the questions will focus on the consumers of the health fitness services, providers of the health fitness and the facilities that offer these services. To enhance the quality of this research, interviews would be integrated in process to refine the design of this research. The adoption of interviews would enable the respondents to give their full opinions over the researched issue (Mathews, Lindner, &Nicholas, 2007). However, respondents in interviews would be few as compared to those who will answer the questionnaires. This is because interviews tend to take a considerable length of time. Limiting the number of the respondent would at least save time. The researcher would ensure that he has interviewed about 10% of the sample size of 2000, which are about 200 respondents in one week’s time. The interview would be taking around 30 minutes the researcher should interview about 25 respondents each day. Proposed data analysis procedures After completing the data collection procedure, the researcher will now embark on data analysis. The coding process and putting would be done by the use of computer program known as statistical package for social sciences (SPSS). The researcher would use various analyses including descriptive, F-tests, T-tests, kurtosis and various frequency distributions to narrow down to results (Elwell, Powell, Wordsworth, & Cummins, 2014). Others data analysis instruments that would be used include graphs, pie charts, frequency tables, histograms and many more. Tables would largely used because this research is quite large because of the sample size. This means that many data would be collected and most of this data can be interpreted well when it is represented in forms of tables. The following figures show how data would be represented in different forms. Tables Name Gender Age Region Name Gender Age Region Pie charts Bar charts Significance of the study To Consumers When data has been concluded and the results achieved, it would much help the consumers of the health fitness pram. These individuals would now be enlightened on what they ought to consider when choosing the best fitness clubs (Research digest, 2012). Consumers would be very cautious by examining the kinds of health fitness packages certain clubs offer. They will be able to choose clubs that offer suitable practices that would enable them to keep health bodies. They would be able to avoid clubs that offer unnecessary and harmful physical exercise but go for those that are objective. Moreover, the consumers of these services would seek those centers that have qualified individuals who would supervise and lead them in doing their fitness (Elwell, Powell, Wordsworth, & Cummins, 2014). The consumers would also be in a position to identify fraudulent clubs who are just up to their money but they don not offer quality services. They will go for clubs that offer affordable rates but better services. In addition, the consumers would became more informed on the issues to do with physical exercises hence, they would know the importance of carrying physical exercises to their health. Fitness centers Business organizations in Australia that offer these services would benefit from this study by knowing the preferences of most of their clients. They will now shift their concentration from profit making to satisfaction of their customers. This would enhance quality services in this industry in turn leading to good health for those who take these exercises. The traders would also acquire appropriate equipments that suit both gender and serve all ages of the customers. How the initial problem would be solved The entire research would provide answers to those people who find themselves in dilemma when deciding which fitness centers they would choose. The research results would highlight the factors that must be considered when choosing a recreations center. This results would show the factors from the most important o least important. Therefore, the consumers would be able to identify the best clubs that offer quality services. Time schedule As discussed in the research design, this research would take about a period of about two weeks right from the time of data collection to analysis through conclusions. The collection of data involving questionnaires and interviews would take one week, analysis, interpretation of data and conclusion would take another week. The study would start as from 12th November to 26th November 2014. The cost of the study would a bit enormous because it covers a large region and many respondents. Timetable 12 to 19th November Data collection 20-21st November Recording and arranging 22-23nd November Data analysis 23-25TH November Data Interpretation 26th November Drawing conclusion Cost of the study The costs that would be incurred include the mailing fee, travelling fee, printing charges, communication expenses and more. Item amount personnel $2000 Mailing costs $500 Fare $1500 Printing charges $800 Communication expenses $950 Miscellaneous costs $600 Total Approximately $6500 References Allen, C. (2014). Supporting effective lifestyle behavior change interventions. Nursing Standard, 28(24), 51-58. Bass, R., Brown, D., Laurson, K., & Coleman, M. (2013). Physical fitness and academic performance in middle school students. Acta Paediatrica, 102(8), 832-837. Betterhealth.vic.gov.au. Fitness centers- how to choose one. Retrieved from http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Fitness_centres_how_to_ choose_the_right_one? 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