The keen competition among the recreation centers clubs is becoming obvious in major metropolitan cities. As a result, each entity has to gather data on certain selected criteria to push forth a stronger and seemingly more innovative product to ensure customer satisfaction, loyalty, and profitability (Hallowell, 1996). These organizations must develop sound operating and management processes to achieve higher level of service quality (Lam, Zhang, & Jensen, 2005). The purpose of this study was to examine the service quality of a recreation center located in a metropolitan city in the United States.
Method:
The Service Quality Assessment Scale (SQAS; Lam et al., 2005) was developed for health-fitness clubs, but it was modified to assess service quality in a recreation setting. The revised 34-item scale had five dimensions and item responses were based on a 5-point Likert scale (e.g., 1=strongly disagree, 3=neutral, and 5=strongly agree). This study also included such demographic variables as gender, age, marital status, income level, and ethnicity.
Analysis/Results:
A total of 100 useable questionnaires were included for data analysis. Results of the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) indicated that five items were either loaded less than .40 or cross-loaded on more than one factor and they were eliminated. The final revised SQAS included five dimensions: staff (9 items), program (7 items), locker room (5 items), physical facility (4 items), and workout facility (4 items). Cronbach’s alphas of these factors were .92, .94, .96, .79, and .83, respectively. Results of one-way ANOVAs indicated there were significant (p < .001) differences in the perception of locker room and physical facility service quality between male and female members. However, no significant (p >.05) gender differences were found in the perception of staff, program, and workout facility. Likewise, no significant (p >.05) differences were found in all the dimensions of the revised SQAS among different age groups.
Conclusions:
In summary, members were satisfied with the overall service quality, facilities, equipment, and staff offered by the Recreation Center. Since female members had higher expectations in locker room and physical facility, the management should pay more attention to the female locker room (e.g., design, upgrade, amenities) and overall ambience of the recreation center (e.g., color and décor, open concept). The perceptions of the workout facility implicated this would be the major attraction to the facility that management must continue to improve upon and maintain a high standard of service to keep membership revenue up.