Evaluation Of Quality Of Provided Sports And Health Services In Russia

Abstract

Today one of the most popular trends of consumer behavior is the aspiration of the person to a healthy lifestyle and maintaining working capacity in the long term. Service sphere - the sector of national economy which has shown confident growth recently. Trends of digitalization of the social and economic relations in society promote this process, changing the nature of service activity, saturating the market with new services, giving ample opportunities for use of new methods of management. One of successfully developing segments of the services market is physical culture and sport services one. According to authors, features of rendering services process, unlike production, are formation of the customized, individual offer considering consumer preferences, and originality of process of service in each transaction. The purpose of article is studying sports organizations management methods in the Russian Federation based on assessment of consumers satisfaction level. The paper is concerned with the positive effects of independent assessment of provided services quality carried out by the physical culture and sport organizations. Much attention is given to the list of subjective and objective criteria for evaluation of the sports organizations activity. The author gives a detailed analysis of Moscow and Samara fitness clubs ratings on the basis of which the author states the lack of the uniform technique and the mechanism of their creation. The relevant importance of this research consists in studying commercial fitness clubs management methods in Russia.

Keywords: Physical culturesport servicesevaluation criteriaconsumersratingsatisfaction level

Introduction

Nowadays the state seeks to pursue active policy in the field of promoting of sport and physical culture not only among children and youth, but also among adult population (The letter of the Ministry of Economic Development…, 2014). One of the motivation mechanisms of the population to physical culture and sport exercising is formation of the flexible differentiated offer of services providing the maximum compliance of their range and granting conditions to consumers’ preferences, adaptation of business processes of the organizations-producers to changes of social and economic conditions. Creation of such mechanism is possible on the basis of application of customer-oriented approach.

Problem Statement

The quality management system marks out the principle of consumer orientation as fundamental for the organizations. At the same time it is necessary to state fragmentariness of application of this approach in the organizations-producers of physical culture and sport services. In institutions of the non-market sector perception of services by consumers was exposed only to incidental screening, and in business structures assessment of customer satisfaction is used only in the course of services promotion. Today it is necessary to create the complex of instruments of physical culture and sport services management allowing to make real changes to business processes of services producers on the basis of consumers' opinions and estimates. However, with a large number of scientific works in the field of management of services theoretical and methodical questions of the organization of processes of rendering physical culture and sport services on the basis of customer-oriented approach are not revealed.

Research Questions

According to the designated purpose in the course of a research the following problems were solved:

• to define and characterize set of sports services, having revealed their new types and forms of realization;

• to designate prerequisites and to scientifically prove expediency of development of sports services in the non-state sector on the basis of assessment of level of satisfaction of consumers;

• to expand the system of methods of assessment of efficiency of the organization of processes of rendering services of physical culture and sport and also management with them.

Purpose of the Study

Qualitatively rendered services in the organizations of social and economic orientation directly influence the level of satisfaction of consumers. Thus, the purpose of article is consideration of the approach to management of the sports organizations based on assessment of consumers satisfaction level.

Research Methods

The trend of improvement of rendering services quality demonstrates the application of the strategy focused mainly on the consumer, and, therefore, on increase in its level of satisfaction with sports services by the physical culture and sport organizations.

It is obvious that, first of all, the customer satisfaction is influenced by his expectations which are formed of recommendations, past experience, internal feelings, etc. The internal conditions of providing sports services including qualification of trainers, availability and condition of sports equipment and exercise machines, the offer of additional services, purity of rooms, personnel attitude form the consumer’s assessment of quality of service rendering process. It should be noted that population’s perception of quality of physical culture and sport services is capable to change as a result of emergence of the rival organizations, accumulation of experience of high-quality services rendering process. Thus, consumers’ satisfaction is formed by the compliance of quality of the provided physical culture and sport services by the organizations to their expectations.

Findings

So, services quality assessment allows to provide quality control of consumer service, forms a basis for the analysis of activity of the organization and adoption of management decisions on increase in its efficiency, it is carried out for ensuring feedback of the consumer with the management of the organization.

Let's consider the approach to management of physical culture and sport of the commercial organizations based on assessment of level of satisfaction of consumers. In this article as the commercial sports organizations we will consider fitness clubs in more detail.

The quality of the services provided to clients of fitness club is one of the most important factors affecting competitiveness of commercial activity. The high quality promotes customer acquisition and creates to fitness club popularity, forming positive image in the market of the considered service trade.

The quality of services is caused by responses of consumers and employees of the organizations, estimates of experts. At the same time such widespread methods as questioning, focus groups, oral poll are applied. The quality of services of physical culture and sport is even more often estimated on a mark system.

Distinguish the following from the main not price criteria by which it is possible to estimate level of quality of services of physical culture and sport in the commercial organizations:

• availability (convenience of arrangement, simplicity of access to service);

• consumer confidence (image of the organization);

• reliability (ability to provide service at the promised level);

• safety (repair and hygienic conditions of the organization);

• professionalism of workers;

• communication level (i.e. to react in time to clients requests; to provide in due time relevant information of the club);

• personnel politeness (manner, courtesy, affability of service staff).

The quality has an impact on pricing, so consumers upon purchase of the subscription pay special attention to a "price – quality" ratio. Thus, consumers of sports services of the commercial organizations are influenced by both price and not price factors.

Many experts in the field of physical culture and sport, studying questions of consumers’ sports services satisfaction level identification, suggest to distribute price and not price factors by criteria and to estimate them to consumers on 5-mark scale. The example of such assessment can look as follows (table 01 ).

These criteria can be expanded, thus, assessment of consumers satisfaction with services of physical culture and sport is influenced by a large number of factors. In the analysis of estimates of indicators, the organizations should develop a complex of actions for improvement of the internal business processes directed to improvement of quality of sports services.

Today in Russia more than 6,000 fitness clubs work (Rating of Moscow, 2019). But at the same time requirements to fitness services at the national level are still not developed. In 2003 in Russia the state control in the form of obligatory certification of services and works was completely cancelled. Within public control Roskontrol Consumers union the house-keeper, business and a premium class on own initiative carries out expertise of fitness clubs. Checks take place as it is opened, and in a format of "the secret buyer". Following the results of one of the last checks in Moscow it was revealed that one of the most strongly influencing factors on quality of fitness services is qualification of personnel, in particular, of trainers and instructors. One of the main problems of today's fitness industry is low qualification of trainers: 30% of the trainers working in the Russian fitness clubs have no professional education. For example, in Fitness-Hall network work, generally the trainers who ended 7-day courses. On a theoretical part of such courses 30 hours for which students have to study anatomy, physiology, sports medicine, biomechanics, motility, fundamentals of psychology and pedagogics, methodology and fundamentals of music basics are allotted, as a rule (SportObzor, 2018). Trainers after such short-term courses are further not capable to control fully the correct performance of exercises and observance engaged safety measures. And at the same time, if the client is traumatized during the occupations, it is almost impossible to involve the trainer or fitness club to responsibility as upon purchase of the card of club the client signs the document that he bears responsibility for a condition of the health.

During an era the figure of national economy actively traces trends of growth of service trade (Bryntsev, 2019). The Internet environment acts as the main provider showing activity of any organization. In online business the new "virtual" channel of self-advertisement which is almost not demanding material inputs was created (Chernova & Farah, 2017).

So, for improving competitiveness of fitness club its participation in electronic rating is especially relevant. Now in territorial subjects of the Russian Federation there are Websites of independent experts in fitness clubs on which it is possible to leave a comment and to give a mark to club. By these estimates the rating of fitness clubs of the region is formed.

So, in top-3 the best fitness clubs of Moscow of 2019, according to the rating.msk.ru portal, such fitness clubs as "Moreon Fitness", "Alex Fitness", "X-Fit" entered (SportObzor, 2018). Personnel, equipping, services, quality, an interior, arrangement were the main criteria which were considered by experts by drawing up rating. Besides overall rating there are also ratings on separate indicators. For example, top three in the Moscow rating on level of service differs from the overall rating stated above a little. The first two places are taken by "Alex Fitness", "X-Fit", and here the third place was taken by "S.S.S.R." fitness club. On quality of the provided services "Moreon Fitness", "World Gym", "TERRASPORT" are in the lead.

By results of other rating on the basis of responses and estimates of fitness clubs of Moscow The Tango without Rules club with GPA 4.88 on the basis of 46 estimates is in the lead, the Zebra club with point 4.74 by results of 42 estimates, on 3 – "Sport PALESTRA" with point 4.74 on the basis of 29 estimates was at the 2nd place (Kleos, 2019).

In the Samara region the ratings of fitness clubs, as a rule, are formed on the basis of estimates of visitors and identification of GPA or by quantity of "stars". Thus, it is possible to notice that results of various ratings differ from each other. It depends on the technique of carrying out a research and criteria used by the expert as the conventional basic criteria do not exist.

Conclusion

Thus, it is possible to draw a conclusion that in Russia the ratings of the organizations were not widely adopted yet as in the West, and are not the main indicator of the state of affairs in the market of rendering services in the sphere of physical culture and sport. The Russian experience of formation of ratings of institutions as independent external objective assessment of quality of rendering social services is still extremely insignificant, in this area the Russian market of sports services is in a stage of development (Serova, Fitina, & Hozyainova, 2015).

Experience of creation of regional and municipal independent systems of assessment of quality of work of the organizations rendering social services including in education, health care, culture, social service is presented by numerous publications, but annual reports on assessment of quality of work of institutions of physical culture and sport in available information sources are absent. This fact demonstrates not systematic identification of level of satisfaction and accounting of opinion of consumers of sports services that by estimates of the western scientists, leads up to 30 percent of sales volume to loss.

References

• Bryntsev, A. N. (2019). Trends in the growth of services in the digital economy. RISK: Resources, Information, Supply, Competition, 1, 71-74. [in Rus.].
• Chernova, D. V., & Farah, N. H. (2017). Features of commercial activity in the electronic environment of consumer markets in different countries. In S.S. Chernov (Ed.), Proceedings of the XLI international scientific-practical conference «Priority scientific directions: From the theory to practice» (pp.135-142). Novosibirsk: LLC Center of Development of Scientific Cooperation. [in Rus.].
• Kleos (2019). Rating of fitness clubs in Moscow. Retrieved from: https://www.kleos.ru/fitness/rating/ Accessed: 01.09.19. [in Rus.].
• Rating of Moscow (2019). Fitness clubs – Moscow's rating. Retrieved from: https://rating.msk.ru/fitness/ Accessed: 01.09.19. [in Rus.].
• Serova, N. B., Fitina, L. N., & Hozyainova, T. K. (2015). Experience in organizing and conducting an independent assessment of the quality of sports institutions. Management of economic systems: Scientific electronic journal, 11(83), 55. [in Rus.].
• SportObzor (2018). Check the results of fitness clubs by Roskontrol. Retrieved from: http://www.sportobzor.ru/fitnes/pervyy-ekspertnyy-obzor-fitnes-klubov-itogi-proverki-roskontrolya.html Accessed: 01.09.19. [in Rus.].
• The letter of the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation of February 28, 2014 N 3939-OF/D09 "About a technique of carrying out social research and assessment of satisfaction of citizens of the Russian Federation with quality of providing the public and municipal services" (2014). Retrieved from: https://base.garant.ru/70712730/ Accessed: 01.09.19. [in Rus.].