Conceptualising customer value in a leisure service setting: value is in the eye of the beholder

Currently there is little research that considers value or value creation from a sport and physical activity context or from the participant’s perspective. Despite the emerging importance of value as an incentive for customers to perform desired behaviours, this study’s investigation represents the first examination of the value construct as it pertains to the consumption of sport and physical activity opportunities. Sheth & Uslay (2007:303) called for marketers to use the value creating paradigm to ‘reach beyond value in exchange and even value in use’ to think about other types of value, whilst this research was focused specifically on identifying the various dimensions of customer-perceived value in a sport and physical activity setting, insights gained from this study also question the simplicity of value being conceived as an either (value-in-exchange) or (value-in-use) concept, and this is where the paper’s significant contribution to further our theoretical understanding can be found. Whilst accepting further work is required to refine the original S&PAVAL model that is presented here, and to test it in a wider variety of settings, this paper contributes to a deeper and more meaningful investigation into customer value theory. Contact details: Dr Paula Kearns Leeds Metropolitan University School of Sport Carnegie Faculty Cavendish Hall Rm 216 Headingley Campus Leeds LS6 3QS Tel 0113 8124034 e-mail P.J.Kearns@leedsmet.ac. uk Conceptualising customer value in a leisure service setting: value is in the eye of the beholder Introduction As the health and social benefits of undertaking regular physical activity have gained greater recognition, so has the need to deliver interventions that can promote wider participation in such activities. However, reviews of interventions aimed at increasing participation levels in the UK have revealed how difficult this is to achieve (Sports Council for Wales, 2005; Sport England 2009; Sports Scotland, 2006; Welsh Audit Office 2007). It is therefore important for leisure policy-makers and providers to understand the meaning, attitudes, beliefs, values and behavioural intentions that underpin decisions to engage, continue or discontinue participation in sport and physical activity, if they are to have any chance of redressing the well rehearsed participation inequalities needed to bring about a significant increase in the proportion of people who are sufficiently active to contribute to a meaningful gain in the health of the nation (Kearns et al., 2012). However, despite the centrality of the value concept in marketing, there is relatively little known about what customer value is (Day & Crask, 2000), for example there is no commonly accepted definition (Russell-Bennett et al., 2009) nor is there a definitive conceptualisation, framework or typology (Smith & Colgate, 2007) making an understanding how consumers determine it extremely difficult. Zainuddin et al., (2011) and Andreasen (2012) have both emphasised the importance of understanding the value offering to be exchanged and argued that policymakers and leisure service providers need to know what ‘it’ is that customers value from their consumption experience in order for ‘it’ to be included into the design and implementation of campaigns aimed at enticing and motivating individuals to become more physically active. It is only through this route that they will be able to design products, services and offerings that add value and make sense in individual’s everyday life (Holt, 2003). This paper therefore presents an original model, the Sport & Physical Activity Value Model (S&PAVAL), which has been tested in a local authority leisure service setting and is a significant contribution towards understanding what ‘it’ is that adults value from being physically active, thus filling an identified gap in the literature. Conceptualising consumer value Marketers have traditionally believed that consumer preferences and market choices were motivated by utilitarian value (Chiu et al., 2005), with consumers perceived as rational beings making choices that maximised utility whilst being constrained by price and income (Sweeney et al., 1999). Therefore the functional nature of value has long been the most prominent conceptualisation whereby ‘value’ is considered to be a cognitive trade-off between benefits and sacrifices, typified by research streams focused on consumers’ qualityprice perceptions (Monroe, 1990; Zeithaml, 1988). Many authors have argued that the cognitive trade-off is too simplistic with Mathwick et al., (2001) considering it ‘narrow’ and Sweeney et al., (1999) as ‘summarised’ considering the numerous tangible and emotional costs/benefits that must be allowed for when understanding the consumption experience (Holbrook, 1986). Consumer research has since evolved from such functional focus regarding the cognitive aspects of decision-making to embrace intrinsic aspects, so that the ‘thinking and feeling’ dimensions of a product, service or experience can be seen to be valued for its own sake (Sweeney & Soutar, 2001). However, in a sport and physical activity setting, whilst cognitive components relate to the traditional view of value as being a trade-off between the ‘getting’ and ‘giving’, such as the benefit and the costs of exercising play a key role, it would be imprudent to attempt to understand the behaviour of physically active adults without incorporating affective components which are centred around feelings generated by the purchase and consumption experience. Indeed, Grönroos (2008) believes that there is now a new paradigm shift from marketing being based on the concept of value-in-exchange to marketing being based on the concept of consumer value creation, where value equates to value-in-use. Some authors propose that value dimensions are independent of each other (Sheth et al., 1991) whilst others propose that value dimension are interrelated (Sweeney & Soutar, 2001). Moreover, different authors have adopted different terminology for their various dimensions of value conceptualisation, although four dimensions of value are consistently represented by Holbrook (2006), Sheth et al., (1991) and Sweeney & Soutar (2001) that of: Functional; Social; Emotional, and; Altruistic Value. Holbrook’s typology (1994, 1999) was considered to be the most suitable theoretical basis from which to move beyond the rational or functional understanding of value based primarily on the quality-price trade-off, to instead understand the importance of the emotional or hedonic aspects of value in a sport and physical activity context. However, despite its richness, the intricacies of Holbrook’s structure complicates its operationalisation in capturing certain value dimension such as spiritual and ethical value (Holbrook, 1999; Wagner, 1999), meaning the few extant empirical investigations of this typology have used only reduced sets of selected value dimensions (Gallarza & Saura, 2006; Mathwick et al., 2001). Sánchez-Fernández et al.’s, (2009) empirical adaption of Holbrook’s typology based in a service context, specifically vegetarian restaurants, is a notable exception. These authors argue that their proposed model is a more comprehensive approach to the value construct because it captures the ‘diverse aspects of the consumption experience, both cognitive and affective in nature – that is, the economic, social, hedonic and altruistic categories of consumer value’ (p97). After considering the various different conceptualisations of consumer value, an initial S&PAVAL conceptual framework was created based on Sánchez-Fernández et al.’s, (2009) adaptation of Holbrook’s (1999) typology of consumer value, re-interpreted into a sport and physical activity context. Method A survey was undertaken of holders of Bridgend County Borough Council’s ‘Bridge Card’ leisure services membership scheme, which as of 1 st July 2011 had a total of 15,030 members across all categories. An appropriate sample size across a range of age and gender-based subgroups was determined to generate a 95% confidence level according to Bartlett et al., (2001), which including the pilot sample returned 1058 usable questionnaires. Quantitative data were supplemented with qualitative insights from 20 in-depth interviews. The initial set of measurement-scale items were based on the consumer value literature outlined earlier in this paper, aside from ‘altruistic value’ which has not been examined in depth as it lies outside the sphere of ordinary marketplace exchanges (Smith, 1999) and consequently few scales exist, therefore the statements relating to this dimension were constructed from the researcher’s industry knowledge. Churchill’s (1979) scale development steps were followed with regard to developing and testing the S&PAVAL model, for the measure of latent variables the scale used a seven-point Likert scale anchored from ‘Strongly disagree’ (1) to ‘Strongly agree (7), with ‘don’t know’ as an eighth point. Cronbach’s alpha (α) was used to determine if it was justifiable to interpret the items that had been aggregated together to comprise the factors presented in the S&PAVAL model, on all factors α ranged from . 961 to . 871 which is within acceptable internal consistency (De Vellis, 2003; Nunally, 1978). An initial exploratory factor analysis (EFA) suggested there were 8-consumption values underpinning adult’s participation in sport and physical activity (Appendix I) which were examined more rigorously in order to validate the assumed dimensionality. To assess the scales’ psychometric properties in terms of convergent/discriminant validity (Hair et al., 1998) and composite reliability (Fornell & Larcker, 1981) by a subsequent confirmatory factor analysis CFA, the final set of items are organised by consumption values and appears in Appendix II. The initial EFA was performed using SPSS v19, a principle axis factor extraction method to account for the non normal data (Costello