Abstract
Because the increasing competition of the sport and fitness private sector raises demands for services of better quality, providers must be able to identify and meet the expectations of the targeted consumers. This study has employed exploratory factorial analysis to reex-amine the underlying structure of the quality excellence of sports centers (QUESC) instrument suggested by Kim and Kim (1995), which measures service quality expectations of consumers of sports and fitness centers. The sample consists of 487 participants in private sport and fitness centers located in a large Greek city called Patras. The results fail to support the stability of the 11-dimension QUESC structure of service quality expectations. Instead, the study suggests a four-factor model that, in conceptual and statistical terms, appears sufficient to adequately describe the fitness service quality expectations. The newly extracted factors are (a) instructor quality, (b) facility attraction and operation, (c) program availability and delivery, and (d) other services. The results clearly support the statistical and conceptual superiority of the extracted model.
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