Market Research Analysis (MK447) is a market research class with a heavy emphasis on IBM’s SPSS software. The course teams undergraduates with local business owners to assist them with marketing strategy issues they may be having.
Our team of undergraduates worked with GymIt - a local gym sited directly across the street from Boston University’s own gym facility. The owners of GymIt were interested in how they could drive more student traffic into their facility and away from the facility that BU offered to its students.
The over-arching challenge that we identified at the start of the assignment was that the fees for use of the BU facility were embedded in tuition charges, and from an undergraduate perspective use of the BU facility was free.
After establishing our survey group and setting targets, we utilized Qualtrics to distribute surveys to the BU undergraduate community. After receiving 175 individual responses (~1% of the student population), we believed that we had a large enough sample size to attempt to quantitatively measure the drivers of interest (or lack of interest) in the GymIt offering to BU undergraduates.
To little surprise to the team, cost was the key issue preventing undergraduates from utilizing the GymIt offering. While valuing the equivalent breadth of equipment and the smaller crowd size at GymIt, the students cited the expense - any expense - of membership a the limiting factor. From the students perspective, why should they pay for a gym when they had an equivalent offering available for free.
With this in mind, our team developed three areas of focus for GymIt to concentrate on as they tried to attract BU students to their facility - accentuate their positives relative to the BU offering, create a special offering for students and recent graduates, and create a brand ambassador for the University.
Relative to the BU gym, GymIt has expanded hours of operation and a smaller crowd size (allowing easier access to equipment). These items were cited as attractive relative to the BU offering. We suggested that these factors be prominent in any advertisement to the BU audience. Our team also felt that a special offering to students and recent graduates would help to entice potential customers into a relationship with GymIt. Once the relationship was established, and the customers experienced the benefits relative to the BU offering, clients would be more willing to pay for the use of the GymIt facility relative to using the no-charge BU facility. Finally, we felt that a specific brand ambassador to the BU community would help to raise awareness and acceptance of the GymIt facility.
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