Abstract

Fitness and sports firms welcome an increasingly higher number of heterogeneous sport users. The rising variety of the sport offer and also the people different needs, motivations and attitudes have led to an absence of a unique sport centre user profile. This means that sports marketers need to segment consumers using sporting services and facilities in order to better satisfy their requirements. Up to now, few empirical studies have been done applying market segmentation criteria to sports contexts (Kim y Kim, 1998; Luna-Arocas y Tang, 2005). The main purpose of this study is to examine the different profiles of sport participants from a holistic point of view. Demographic, as well attitudinal ad motivational variables have been considered simultaneously in order to obtain a new segmentation purpose of actual sport centres users. Multivariate analysis and combined use of several clustering procedures (Ward and K-means) allow us to identify four segments which have a big interest as well from a conceptual point of view and from the management.