Critical Analysis Of Gym Business Survey: Reasons For Visiting And Best Practices

Literature Review

Discuss about the Critical Analysis of Gym Business Survey.

A gym is a physical fitness facility where people go to get themselves physically fit. A critical analysis of the gym business indicates that various people visit the gym for various reasons. Some visit the facility just to reduce weight; others visit it to release stress, others to gain strength while others do it for leisure. Just as the reasons for visiting the gym, the equipment inside the gym is as much. Due the current competition in the industry, many business persons in the industry have been struggling to cut an edge above their competitors. This has been a tough exercise as people try different ways of operating to beat the competition but to no avail. Many questions have been asked by the concerned whether it is the quality of services, variety of equipment or competent instructors that attract people. It is against this background that this survey has been conducted to establish the various reasons that endear clients to specific gym outlets. The study then sought to make recommendations to the management on the best practices to adopt so as to stay afloat in a competitive industry as this.

The one time not considered as an important business has been picking up gradually. In Australia, gym business has grown considerably to the extent of earning the country revenue of 2 billion dollars per annum. Statistics also has it that it has employed more 23,000 people in Australia (IBISWorld).

According to frachisehelp, in America, it is estimated that 20% go to the gym on a daily basis. It is alleged that this increase has been attributed to technology which has been introduced in gym. For example instead of treadmills, the technology has expanded this to include ellipticals that help people who cannot run on the treadmill. According to (Thompson, 2007), worker incentive program has encouraged more people to embrace physical fitness as a way of maintaining good health. Apart from better nutrition and health and safety interventions (Kjaer, 2008) advices that physical exercise also plays an important role in the life of any human being.

Post-encounter satisfaction and perspective of the customer affects the future probability of acquisition, while the customer’s nullification is associated with the buyer’s reliability level, however not with pre-encounter objectives or attitude (Oliver, 2008). Post-encounter perspective of the customer is moreover a component of satisfaction. These disclosures recommend that customers’ suppositions or yearnings can be changed in the midst of an organization experience to yield satisfaction, paying little personality to how the customer has seen the involvement ahead of time, or what the customers’ desires of returning are before the organization encounter.

gender * reason for going to gym Cross tabulation
Count
	Reason for going to gym	Total
gain strength	lose weight	stress relief	other
gender	female	8	37	3	3	51
male	33	11	3	2	49
Total	41	48	6	5	100

Bivariate Analysis

As can be demonstrated by both the cross tabulation and the chart above, it can be observed that majority of the people who go to the gym either go there for the purpose of losing weight or gaining strength. A clear difference in reason is seen as to why both genders frequent the facility. It can be said that females visit gyms majorly to boost their strength as can be seen from the chart while males frequent the facilities to lose their weight. Other reasons for visiting gyms though not significant, is for the purpose of relieving stress which is rated equal between the two genders.

This study also sought to establish whether there was a relationship between reason for going to the gym and gender. As such a chi-square test for independence was conducted to test the same at 95% level of significance. The hypothesis for the test was as below;

H₀: There is no relationship between gender and reason for going to the gym.

H₁: There is a significant relationship between gender and reason for going to the gym.

Chi-Square Tests
	Value	df	Asymp. Sig. (2-sided)
Pearson Chi-Square	29.499a	3	.000
Likelihood Ratio	31.396	3	.000
Linear-by-Linear Association	12.329	1	.000
N of Valid Cases	100
a. 4 cells (50.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 2.45.

From the test above, we can observe that the p-value is far much less than the level of significance; .05>.00. We are then guided to reject the null hypothesis and accept the alternative. To conclude therefore, it can be said that there is a significant relationship between gender and going to the gym.

Comparing p-value and the level of significance, we find that the p-value is less than significance level. .05 > .00. Therefore we reject the null hypothesis and accept the alternative that the there is a significant relationship between visual discrimination test scores and reading achievement scores. In this test we assumed that the data are dependent and thus this method may be wrong if applied in cases where variables are no causative effects between variables.

Correlation between number of visits per week and weight

Descriptive Statistics
	Mean	Std. Deviation	N
weight	78.5500	15.34017	100
Number of visits per week	1.6200	.81377	100

Correlations
	weight	Number of visits per week
weight	Pearson Correlation	1	.176
Sig. (2-tailed)		.079
N	100	100
Number of visits per week	Pearson Correlation	.176	1
Sig. (2-tailed)	.079
N	100	100

Two variables may be correlated yet we might fail to deduce the extent and the direction of correlation. Therefore it is not just enough to say that there is a correlation between any two variables. It is until we employ Pearson’s correlation that we can exhaustively describe correlation between variables. This study performed a Pearson’s correlation test to establish the direction and extent of correlation between weight of individuals and the number of times that they visited the gym. The results are as observed in table 4 above. It can be seen that a correlation exists in the positive direction between the two variables though it is a weak correlation since it has a value of .18.

Chi-Square Test for Independence

The study also sought to find out the duration that individuals took exercising on different equipment. An analysis was conducted to test whether there was a significant difference in the time that individuals took exercising on cardio machine and time taken exercising on weight machine. A t-test was performed in this case as below.

H₀: There is no difference in the time spent exercising on cardio machine and time spent exercising on weight machine.

H₁: There is a significant difference in the time spent exercising on cardio machine and time spent exercising on weight machine.

Paired Samples Test
	Paired Differences	t	df	Sig. (2-tailed)
Mean	Std. Deviation	Std. Error Mean	95% Confidence Interval of the Difference
Lower	Upper
Pair 1	Minutes on cardio machine – minutes on weight machine	-7.10000	18.02327	1.80233	-10.67621	-3.52379	-3.939	99	.000

From the table above, level of significance is greater than the p-value; .05>.00. Therefore we reject the null hypothesis and accept the alternative which leads to a conclusion that there is a significant difference in the time spent exercising on the two machines.

From the literature review and the analyses done above the study recommends that more feminine equipment for gaining strength be added as most females visit the gym for the purpose of gaining strength. On the same note, more male equipment for losing weight should also be added on an equal measure since most males frequent the gym to lose weight. The management should also allocate more time on weight machine as people tend to take much time on it than the cardio machine. Alternatively, the weight machines should be more in number to cater for the much time taken by individuals exercising on it so as to ease probable congestion in the gym. It is also important that the management have a high variety of exercise equipment as majority of those in the survey (73%) supported this.

One-Sample Statistics
	N	Mean	Std. Deviation	Std. Error Mean
Support proposed change	1000	1.1090	.31180	.00986

Hypothesis test for the claim that the proportion that supports the change is more than 50%

Hypothesis test

H₀: The proportion that supports the change is not more than 50%.

H₁: The proportion that supports the change is more than 50%.

One-Sample Test
	Test Value = 0.5
t	df	Sig. (2-tailed)	Mean Difference	90% Confidence Interval of the Difference
Lower	Upper
Support proposed change	61.766	999	.000	.60900	.5928	.6252

From the table above, level of significance is greater than the p-value; .05>.00. Therefore we reject the null hypothesis and accept the alternative which leads to a conclusion that the proportion that supports the change is more than 50%.

Conclusion

In summary it can be said that there is need to buy more variety of high machines as these tend to be the main attractors to gym lovers. It can also be concluded from this study that it is a misconception that only the obese are the ones supposed to exercise as this study found that other people visit the gym to gain strength and for relieve stress too and not necessarily to lose weight.

References

Desmet (2005). Australian Centre for Retail Studies. Melbourne: Monash University.

Arnst , C. (2008). Behind Rising Healthcare Costs. Business Week.

Clarke, G. M. (2009). A Basic Course in Statistics, Edward Arnold, (6th edition ed.).

Devore, J., & Peck, R. (2000). Introductory Statistics, West,.

Thompson, W. R. (2013). Now trending: worldwide survey of fitness trends for 2014.