Factors that Impact Consumer Intention of the Personal Trainer Service

Abstract

This study has investigated the factors that have more impact on the intention of contracting by the consumer of the personal trainer service, seeking to understand, among the variables chosen through the literature, the ones that have more impact on the purchasing decision of this professional's future students. The constructs analyzed were: social skills, customer orientation, expertise and physical appearance of the personal trainer, as well as the student's familiarity with physical activity, using the conceptual framework of relationship marketing to analyze the mentioned constructs. The type of the research was confirmatory and the method was quantitative, composed of 332 respondents. In order to reach the objective of this dissertation, the closed questionnaire and the partial least square analysis (PLS) were used as data collection instrument to validate the hypotheses. As results, the consumers have the physical appearance of the personal trainer with greater significance when making the decision to acquire this service, followed by their familiarity moderating the professional's expertise, that is, the more previous knowledge of physical activity the consumer has, the more he/she will expect of the professional. One of the main suggestions, given the results, is that the personal trainer should show a personal physical appearance that demonstrates health care and muscle tone, as this inspires their new clients to contract them, having a higher significance than the other variables studied. Besides that, having superior knowledge than the consumer's, because the more information the client has, the more demanding he/she will be.