The Index of Recreation Marketing Excellence: An Audit Instrument for Measuring the Effectiveness of Marketing Efforts at a Student Recreation Center
Keywords:
Marketing audit, recreation services, interactive marketing, external marketing, internal marketing, service qualityAbstract
The paper develops and demonstrates the use of a comprehensive audit for evaluating the effectiveness of external marketing, internal marketing, and service quality in the context of a recreation center. The inclusion of internal marketing and service quality in the audit represents an extension of existing audit frameworks in the recreation field that have focused exclusively on external marketing. The purpose of an audit is to identify strengths and weaknesses of the marketing effort, which validates or leads to a revision of a facility's operating procedures. The Index of Recreation Marketing Excellence audit framework developed in the paper was substantially adapted from an instrument that had been designed for use in the private sector.
The 66-item audit instrument was tested at a large recreation Center that had recorded over one million visits in the past year and had an extensive array of facilities. It was administrated to a convenience sample of the facility's users (n=300), all front-line employees (n=l50), and all management-level employees (n=40). Response rates of 74, 69, and 82 percent, respectively, were obtained from the three groups. Reliability coefficients of some of the scales in the audit instrument were relatively low, probably because of the small number of items in these scales. The case study data revealed that managers were consistently stronger in their belief that the center's external marketing strategy was effective than were those responsible for enacting it on the front line. On the selected items of the external marketing scales to which center users were invited to respond, they were generally less positive than management. The internal marketing scales highlighted wages and benefits, raises and awards, and feedback on job performance as items that employees thought needed to be addressed, while good working conditions and positive relations with supervisors and co-workers were strengths. The service quality items identified as needing most attention reflected the heavy use of the facility in that they related to cleanliness and maintenance issues. These implications derived from the case study are not generalizable, but they illustrate the type ofinsights that might be forthcoming from use of the audit. Suggestions for improving the audit instrument are provided.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Sagamore Publishing LLC (hereinafter the “Copyright Owner”)
Journal Publishing Copyright Agreement for Authors
PLEASE REVIEW OUR POLICIES AND THE PUBLISHING AGREEMENT, AND INDICATE YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THE TERMS BY CHECKING THE ‘AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS COPYRIGHT NOTICE’ CHECKBOX BELOW.
I understand that by submitting an article to Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, I am granting the copyright to the article submitted for consideration for publication in Journal of Park and Recreation Administration to the Copyright Owner. If after consideration of the Editor of the Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, the article is not accepted for publication, all copyright covered under this agreement will be automatically returned to the Author(s).
THE PUBLISHING AGREEMENT
Assignment of Copyright
I hereby assign to the Copyright Owner the copyright in the manuscript I am submitting in this online procedure and any tables, illustrations or other material submitted for publication as part of the manuscript in all forms and media (whether now known or later developed), throughout the world, in all languages, for the full term of copyright, effective when the article is accepted for publication.
Reversion of Rights
Articles may sometimes be accepted for publication but later be rejected in the publication process, even in some cases after public posting in “Articles in Press” form, in which case all rights will revert to the Author.
Retention of Rights for Scholarly Purposes
I understand that I retain or am hereby granted the Retained Rights. The Retained Rights include the right to use the Preprint, Accepted Manuscript, and the Published Journal Article for Personal Use and Internal Institutional Use.
All journal material is under a 12 month embargo. Authors who would like to have their articles available as open access should contact gbates@sagamorepub.com for further information.
In the case of the Accepted Manuscript and the Published Journal Article, the Retained Rights exclude Commercial Use, other than use by the author in a subsequent compilation of the author’s works or to extend the Article to book length form or re-use by the author of portions or excerpts in other works.
Published Journal Article: the author may share a link to the formal publication through the relevant DOI.
Author Representations
- The Article I have submitted to the journal for review is original, has been written by the stated author(s) and has not been published elsewhere.
- The Article was not submitted for review to another journal while under review by this journal and will not be submitted to any other journal.
- The Article contains no libelous or other unlawful statements and does not contain any materials that violate any personal or proprietary rights of any other person or entity.
- I have obtained written permission from copyright owners for any excerpts from copyrighted works that are included and have credited the sources in the Article.
- If the Article was prepared jointly with other authors, I have informed the co-author(s) of the terms of this Journal Publishing Agreement and that I am signing on their behalf as their agent, and I am authorized to do so.