Local Gym
Introduction
Gym now become part of people’s life, they join gym for different purpose such as fitness, loss weight, rehabilitation, body building, imitation, fun time and prestige. Our gym called “SHAPES”, it founded two years ago, and located in one of the beautiful Northern suburbs of Melbourne city, close to shopping centres and public transportation stations. We invest $ 2 million to equip the gym using the state of the art equipment, unique wireless sound system and luxury furniture. We focus on both male and female, who are in the middle and upper classes society and they interested gym and exercises, the previous or current gym’s visitors, and the high school and university students as well. We offer high nutritive supplements and healthy food with extra reasonable prices and free food dietary plans. Our prices will be lower than competitors’ average (Gymprices 2009).
Our patronage is too low to make the gym viable and we need to increase the number of members quickly to keep the bank from foreclosing our loans. We do not have budget for advertising but we have some cash available from the operating budget. As the new manager I decided to use my knowledge of consumer behaviour and implement one or more theories to target and attract more members.
Cognitive Learning Theory
Non-conscious procedural knowledge
Most of people are more likely to do the process or at least some information in passive or in automatic way, which is a condition that has been called mindlessness. When people meet someone new or encounter a new idea or product, they have a tendency to respond to the stimulus based on existing knowledge they have learned, rather than taking the effort to formulate something new (Solomon et al., 2006).
As new gym’s manager associated with other staff, we decided to implement the cognitive learning theory. Firstly, we decided to implement the first part of the theory, which is the non-conscious procedural knowledge, to target people who are doing some of their life process automatically or on passive way especially when they encounter a new ideas or products. Because they act based on their previous knowledge which they have learned, we planned to use sales promotion, which is part of marketing mix, as stimulus, so we will distribute brochures of gym in the universities, mailbox of houses, public places, these brochures promoted a good discount and show that our prices started from $2 dollars as shown in Figure 1. So consumers who see our brochures they may throw it but they will keep in their minds the price and it will store in their memory as new knowledge about the gym’s prices, so in the future when they think to go to gym or somebody ask them about gym they will response based on their previous knowledge about prices, which is our prices. Even if they go to another gym often they compare nothing except the price.
Observational Learning
The observational learning takes place when people watch the behaviour of others and reflect on their behaviours. Learning resources from other people’s behaviours are much stronger than direct experience. These observations are stored in people’s memory as accumulate knowledge, in case they need to use this information at a later time to steer their behaviour. “This process of imitating the behaviour of others is called modelling” (Solomon et al, 2006).
In this part of the cognitive learning consumer should pass through four stages. The first stage is the attention, where the consumer focuses on model’s behaviour. Second, retention, where is the consumer retains this behaviour in memory. Next, in the production processes stage the consumer has the ability to perform the behaviour. Finally, the motivation stage, where is a situation arises wherein the behaviour is useful to the consumer. We implemented this part of theory by sign agreement with one of the sport’s celebrities who have a good body shape. That’s why we decided to select Mr. Paul Licuria, one of the famous football players in the country and he has very good body shape as shown in Figure 2. We invite him to the gym to sign agreement with a payment of 10% of membership fees for all members who subscribe through the special discount vouchers which is printed with his picture and will distribute it during and after the day of his visit to our gym. When the confirmation of Paul is received, we arrange to hold a press conference with local press and some TV channels to announce the agreement during Paul’s visit to our gym. Under the flashes of press’ cameras and fans, Paul will use most of the gym’s equipments. Next day the Paul’s visit is covered by most of the local newspapers and some TV channels shows large number of pictures whiles he using our gym’s equipments. In this stage – attention – so many fans sow their favourite player behaviour in our gym, and they definitely will store this behaviour in their memory. When the behaviour stored in the memory it is mean people now reach to the production processes stage, where they become ready and have the ability to act or copy the same behaviour of Paul. After people reach to production processes stage we decided to motivate them by distributing 15% discount voucher in the gym during Paul’s visit or later and to the universities, mailbox of houses, public places in the around suburbs, also to football fans during the football matches supported by big posters shows the same discount and Paul’s pictures. These posters will place in the gym’s showcase. In this stage we completed the cycle of observational learning which lead consumer to acquire and perhaps perform the behaviour demonstrated by Paul Licuria, their favourite player.
Sensory Systems Theory
External stimuli can be received on five different channels of the human body. Each sensory stimulus has sensory receptor, see Figure 3. For example eyes are sights’ receptor. So, all advertisements, store design and products packaging are used to target the consumers’ stimuli through sights sensory. Also marketers are using some colours such as red to evoke the feelings of arousal and blue for calm and relaxing, moreover, influence of culture, where in Western countries the black is morning colour, and in some Eastern countries they prefer white colour. Earlier studies have been shown that mature consumers prefer white colour much more other colours, so they are more likely to choose white cars. This illustrate why Lexus make 60% of its cars in white colour. In addition, ears are sounds’ receptor, and marketers rely on this sensory a lot to run their business, such as “functional music” which is played in stores, shopping centres and offices either for relax or stimulate consumers. Even online retailers sometimes use same music that is used in the physical store. “Stimulus progression” is music system commonly used in workplaces to increase tempo during slack times (Solomon et al, 2006)..
Exposure
Absolute Threshold is one of the important factors in marketing stimuli. For example, drivers or passengers cannot fully read and understand small billboard in the highway, so it is very important that marketers make consumers received their promotional message within less than one second. In the same time, marketers should keep in mind The Differential Threshold and not use the same font and picture’s size with different sizes of posters or advertisements.
To implement sight sensory stimuli, we decided to use clear and different sizes of posters instead the advertisements due to the lack of advertisement’s budget. The posters contain a concise promotional statements and meaningful pictures, which are telling the targeted consumers all stories about our gym in less than one second as shown in Figure 4. These posters will put in the gym’s showcase and on the footpath at the front of our gym. Furthermore, we decided to make the gym’s front side fully glasses and install additional speakers close to the main entrance, so all passers-by at front of the gym can listen and see what’s happening inside the gym, taking into account the privacy of some members, so all members have been allocated between the front and rear lounges depend their desires.
It is very difficult to unify the desire of people to listen to one type of music in the same time, so we decided to use the sound stimulus perfectly by using wireless headphone system (Bluetooth headphone) connected to computer with music distribution software, which allow to operate different type of music to each connected headphone in the same time, so every member can listen to his preferred music, which lead to increase positive behaviour among current members, who are probably will talk about new sound system to his family or friends. Also we offer nutritive supplements in our gym, so we can employ the taste sensory stimulus by give free samples to members or visitors to taste it. If they found it taste good, defiantly they will keep it in their minds and it will store in their memory.
If the targeted consumers, who are sight the posters, or listen and sow the actual members’ behaviour inside our gym, or hear about our new sound system and our new nutritive supplements were interested in fitness and gym, they will reach to the attention stage. In this stage, all things have been seen or listen or tasted, defiantly will be stored in memory, but their interpretation to the behaviour will be completely different, because some of them have positive behaviour and the others are negative. Therefore, there is no problem with the positive consumers because they have high chance to go to gym, but the consumers who have a negative behaviour toward the gym can be deal with them by using some of marketing aspects such as price and promotion to change their behaviour to the positive, which is leaded to increase the chance of joining our gym. This could be done by cutting price or strong promotion such as 15% – 20% discount, doubling the length of subscription at the same price, offering free third membership for each two memberships and 50% discount for children.