Competitive Advantage in the Health and Fitness Industry: Developing Service Bundles

Supporting services augment the value of a business's core service, provide points of differentiation, and create a competitive advantage over competitors. Fitness clubs offer a number of supporting services, including sport participation opportunities. Fitness tests are a common supporting service. This study examined interest in fitness tests and related supporting services. Moreover, because customised programs are harder to imitate, optimal combinations of desired services were investigated. Further, K-means cluster analysis identified seven meaningfully differentiated customer groups. MANOVA and chi-square analyses indicated that clustered groups differed based on demographic and psychographic variables. The study demonstrates that (1) consumers desire supporting services, (2) distinct bundles of supporting services can be identified, and (3) consumers desiring distinct bundles of services are have distinct demographic and psychographic profiles. Fitness providers can develop distinct, desirable bundles of supporting services and can develop more tailored marketing strategies based on these consumer profiles.