Customer Loyalty in the Fitness Club Industry: The Role of Club Communication, Customer Expectation, and Perceived Service Quality

Abstract

Recently fitness clubs have become very popular among urban Chinese people due to increased health awareness and the lack of outdoor physical exercise space The study aims to provide an extended view of industrial business-to-consumer B2C connections by linking the theoretical steams of marketing communication The study examines how firms marketing communication FMC affects customer expectations EXP and perceived service quality PSQ subsequently influencing fitness club customer satisfaction CS and customer loyalty CL An online survey was conducted in China and 300 valid respondents were taken as samples from large fitness club chains Elementary analyses were done using IBM SPSS version 25 structural equation modeling SEM was tested using SmartPLS version 3 2 8 The study demonstrates that FMC is positively linked to EXP and PSQ which subsequently helps build CL toward fitness clubs in China Moreover communication has a negative complementary full-mediation effect on CL through expectation and satisfaction and a positive complementary full-mediation effect on CL through PSQ and CS Lastly the theoretical and practical implications of communication on CS and CL in the fitness club sector are discussed