Business Research: Social Media Marketing for Gym Customer Retention

This research proposal investigates the impact of social media marketing strategies on customer retention within the fitness industry, specifically focusing on Anytime Fitness. The study identifies customer attrition as a key problem due to the company's reliance on traditional marketing methods and lack of direct customer interaction. The research aims to determine the factors influencing customer retention through social media, explore effective social media strategies, and assess their overall impact. Key research questions address the factors of customer retention obtained through social media marketing, the factors affecting the implementation of appropriate social media marketing strategies and the impacts of social media marketing strategies for customer retention in the fitness industry. The proposal references existing literature on social media marketing and customer relationship management to provide a foundation for the research. It also highlights the importance of understanding customer needs and preferences through social media to foster long-term engagement and loyalty.

Running head: BUSINESS RESEARCH METHOD RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Business Research Method Research Proposal
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1BUSINESS RESEARCH METHOD RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Information to include
Report title Impact of social media marketing strategies for customer retention in
Gym (fitness industry)
Industry partner The considered company is “Anytime Fitness”, established in the years
2002 and headquartered in Minnesota, United States (). The concerned
organization is currently operates in 30 countries with over 4,000
franchises. The organization obtained $1100 million and $1250 million
in 2015 and 2016 respectively (Statista 2018). There are 7,866
employees in Anytime Fitness (Anytime Fitness 2018). The company
also focuses on budget friendly programmes total wellness program,
rewards and incentives and gym membership. The relation with the
company is that one of the employees of the organization is my friend.
Research Field The research field discipline is “Marketing” in this case as the research
focuses on retaining existing customers in the organization through
effective social media strategies.
Research problem The selected company is facing an issue related to customer attrition as
a result the profitability of the company reduces. The company only
focuses on traditional media of promotion, due to which only few
customer can get aware of their program. Moreover, there is no proper
interaction occurred with the users and ask for any feedback for
improving their services. This results in attrition of the users which
leads to poor brand reputation.

2BUSINESS RESEARCH METHOD RESEARCH PROPOSAL
This research will focus on one of the conventional promotional
medias that are the social media platform to get linked with the users
for better development of the relationship. This will drive the sense of
remain associated with the organization for a longer time.
The problem of retaining customer is important for making profitability
but also for making them aware of the activities that the company is
taking for the benefit of the users. Thus, the factors for which the
customer attrition occurs need to be investigated. Moreover, the use of
social media is selected so that users from a vast demographic location
can be targeted and for this factors which affects in implementing
appropriate social media marketing strategies for retaining customers
will be focused. All these details will help in finding the precise
impacts of social media marketing strategies for customer retention in
fitness industry.
Overarching
research aim
This research aims to find different factors of customer retention
obtained through social media marketing and some appropriate social
media marketing strategies for retaining customers in order to find the
impact of the selected media for retaining users.
Research
questions(s)
• What are the different factors of customer retention obtained through
social media marketing?
• What are the factors which affects in implementing appropriate social
media marketing strategies for retaining customers?
• What are the impacts of social media marketing strategies for

3BUSINESS RESEARCH METHOD RESEARCH PROPOSAL
customer retention in fitness industry?
Keywords Customer retention
Social media marketing
References Ilina, A., 2015. Social Media Marketing Strategies for Customer
Retention in Fitness Industry.
This research is published in the year 2015 and highlight the role of the
social media marketing in retaining the customers and the factors
creates customer loyalty in fitness industry through the selected media.
Thus, it can be said that it directly address the selected research issue
for this research study.
Malthouse, E.C., Haenlein, M., Skiera, B., Wege, E. and Zhang, M.,
2013. Managing customer relationships in the social media era:
Introducing the social CRM house. Journal of Interactive
Marketing, 27(4), pp.270-280.
The 2013 published research article focused on the “Social CRM
House” that filters out advertising and CRM messages. The concept of
big data and data analytics is followed in this journal that compares the
data of the users anywhere with portable devices and helps the
company to identify the factors that can be used for retaining the
customers of an organization. However, this research paper however is
not based on any particular industry and hence considered for this
research to address the developed research questions.

4BUSINESS RESEARCH METHOD RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Reference List
Anytime Fitness., 2018. Employee Wellness. [online] Available at:
https://www.anytimefitness.com/employee-wellness/ [Accessed 17 Jul 2018].
Ilina, A., 2015. Social Media Marketing Strategies for Customer Retention in Fitness Industry.
Malthouse, E.C., Haenlein, M., Skiera, B., Wege, E. and Zhang, M., 2013. Managing customer
relationships in the social media era: Introducing the social CRM house. Journal of Interactive
Marketing, 27(4), pp.270-280.
Statista., 2018. Revenue of the Anytime Fitness health club company from 2012 to 2017 (in
million U.S. dollars). [online] Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/348458/anytime-
fitness-revenue/ [Accessed 17 Jul 2018].