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In this study the authors examined the impact of employees' collaborative behaviours with colleagues and customers (i.e. employee–employee collaboration and employee–customer collaboration) on their creative self-efficacy and service innovation from the perspective of service-dominant logic. The authors also examined the differences between frontline and non-frontline fitness service employees in our research model. This study aims to discuss the aforementioned objectives.

Participants were fitness-centre employees in Taiwan recruited via convenience sampling. A total of 410 participants completed our online survey, and the authors analysed the data using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

The authors found that collaboration with both colleagues and customers had a positive impact on employees' creative self-efficacy. Collaboration with colleagues directly affected service innovation, while collaboration with customers indirectly affected service innovation via creative self-efficacy. In addition, there was a significant difference between frontline and non-frontline employees in our research model. Specifically, the path from collaboration with customers to creative self-efficacy was stronger for frontline employees, and the path from creative self-efficacy to service innovation was stronger for non-frontline employees.

This study improves the understanding of the way in which different collaborative behaviours promote employees' creative self-efficacy and service innovation. Further, it is the first to identify the difference between frontline and non-frontline employees and it shows how the effects of collaborative behaviours differ between them in the context of fitness services.

This study aims to develop a conceptual model to understand how customer knowledge management (CKM) affects fitness club membership renewal through the mediation of relationship quality.

Data were collected outside of fitness clubs using a systematic sampling method. A total of 224 valid responses were collected. Structural equation modelling was used to evaluate the relationship between the constructs of the research model.

The results indicate that both knowledge from customers and knowledge for customers have a positive influence on customer satisfaction and customer trust. Among them, knowledge for customers has a stronger influence on customer satisfaction while knowledge from customers has a greater influence on customer trust. Additionally, three dimensions of relationship quality (customer satisfaction, customer trust and customer commitment) positively influence membership renewal intention with customer commitment exhibiting the greatest influence on it.

This study combines the theories of CKM and relationship quality management to explain why members will renew their service contracts. By using fitness clubs as an example, this research extends the authors' understanding of how knowledge from and for customers can influence customers' attitudes and behavioural intentions towards service companies.

Fitness centers have become quotidian fundamentals. Consequently, center managers face escalating competitiveness to sustain their businesses. Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 emphasizes quality of life and the gravitation toward healthy lifestyles. The service quality of fitness centers is an essential factor influencing customer satisfaction. Owing to the dearth of research on this topic, especially on female-only fitness centers, this study aims to investigate the factors affecting the service quality of female fitness centers in Saudi Arabia regarding satisfaction. Additionally, this study examines the moderating roles of age and income on the relationship between service quality and satisfaction.

The Service Quality Assessment Scale (SQAS) was adopted with five of the original dimensions (staff, workout facilities, physical facilities, exercise program and locker room) and two newly added dimensions (parking and social environment). This study also investigates the moderating roles of age and income on the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction.

All SQAS dimensions positively affected the quality of fitness centers. Furthermore, the service quality of fitness centers increased women's satisfaction, and age and income moderated the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction.

Fitness centers are highly competitive, and this study offers insights for managers of such facilities to improve customer satisfaction.

The user experience during the use of activities and services is a fundamental aspect for sports managers and can provide a competitive advantage. The purpose of this study was to identify the dimensions of experiential quality and the relationship of this construct with customer trust and customer satisfaction in achieving behavioral intention.

Using a convenience sampling technique, a total of 322 gym users in Turkey participated. A two-step approach was used to test both the model and the research hypotheses [confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM)].

The interaction quality, physical environmental quality, outcome quality and enjoyment quality were positively related to experiential quality. Similarly, the experimental quality was positively related to customer satisfaction and customer trust. Finally, customer satisfaction was related to behavioral intentions.

This study provides empirical evidence about the importance of experiential quality to gain a competitive advantage in the context of fitness centers.

The aim of the present study is to examine the impact of human resource (HR) practices (human resource empowerment, organizational culture and transformational leadership) on innovation activities as well as the effect of innovation activities on perceived financial performance within sport services firms.

The proposed relationships were examined using empirical data from 172 managers of Greek sport services firms. Seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) analysis was used to investigate the role of human resource management (HRM) practices on innovation activities and whether innovation activities affected the perceived financial performance.

The results of the study indicated that HRM practices, such as human resource empowerment, organizational culture and transformational leadership, significantly impact innovation activities and subsequently innovation activities have a significant and positive effect on perceived financial performance as measured by satisfaction levels in relation to specific key performance indicators (KPIs) such as profit, ROI, sales volume and market share.

This study presents useful theoretical and managerial implications that can be used by sport service firms to assess the effects of HRM practices on innovation activities and perceived financial performance.

This study contributes to the literature on several merits. Firstly, the authors jointly estimate the impact of HRM practices on innovation and its concurrent effect on perceived financial performance, which is not methodologically considered before. Secondly, the authors incorporate a more thorough measure of perceived financial performance including four dimensions of performance, and finally the authors analyze a larger sample of sport services firms relative to previous studies, leading into more concrete conclusion on the research hypotheses.

The paper provides a step-by-step guide in the guise of a roadmap for service improvement initiatives using importance performance map analysis (IPMA).

To empirically illustrate how IPMA can be applied to any service industry, three sectors are considered; sports and fitness (study A), hospitality (study B) and higher education (study C). Following the proper selection of measuring instruments and their evaluation using structural equation modeling-partial least squares (Smart-PLS), IPMA is applied to identify those attributes having strong total effects (high importance) over the targeted construct (satisfaction) but which also have low average latent variable scores (low performance).

For sports and fitness (study A), the physical aspects and programme quality require managerial attention. For the hospitability sector (study B), it is service commitment, interaction quality and internal sense of happiness. Whereas for higher education (study C), it is administrative quality as well as the element of transformative quality, namely the university’s role in adding to its students’ emotional stability, which needs the attention of the top management.

This study provides researchers and practitioners with a roadmap for applying PLS-SEM and IPMA for continuous service quality improvement. The roadmap extends upon Ringle and Sarstedt’s (2016) work. It highlights critical decisions that need to be considered in the pre-analytical stages of the IPMA application, i.e. at the research design phase in selecting the most appropriate service quality measurement model specifications. It not only contributes to the existing body of knowledge by providing empirical evidence to advance theory development in the quality management field but also has implications for the practitioners in any service sector on where to focus their attention for an effective service improvement.

Value co-creation is a new initiative for enterprises to form a competitive advantage, and user engagement is the basis for achieving value co-creation; nevertheless, few studies have discussed the influence mechanisms of user engagement on value co-creation behavior. In this study, the authors aim to reveal the influence mechanisms of online fitness user engagement on value co-creation behavior by considering emotional resonance and immersive experience as mediating variables.

The authors proposed and empirically tested a research model based on a survey involving 461 Chinese respondents through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results of this study confirm that consumer engagement, contributing engagement and social engagement are important drives of value co-creation behavior among online fitness users. Furthermore, emotional resonance and immersive experience have been revealed as important mediating mechanisms to explain why user engagement drives value co-creation behavior.

The results of this study suggest that practitioners need to focus on the social engagement and consumer engagement of users in online fitness communities and to provide the appropriate environment and conditions for online fitness user to achieve mutual value co-creation.

This study makes two main contributions. It examines user engagement in an online fitness community context and helps to understand its applicability in other contexts. It explains the influence mechanisms of online fitness user engagement on value co-creation behavior and enriches the studies related to the drivers of value co-creation behavior.

Although co-creation draws attention from researchers and practitioners, the concept is theoretically discussed, and it is not known enough how to measure co-created value (CCV) substantially at service encounters. This study aims to conceptualize CCV from the service-dominant (S-D) logic perspective and develop a CCV scale for hospitality services.

In addition to the conventional psychometric procedure for scale development, this study combined text-mining techniques and interviews to generate items to capture the concept of CCV comprehensively. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted using two different surveys. Moreover, structural equation modeling was performed to test concurrent validity.

The study developed a CCV scale, including four sub-dimensions: CCV-in-use, CCV-in-interaction, CCV-in-involvement and CCV-in-experience. The validity test results demonstrated that the new scale effectively measured CCV in a hospitality setting.

The multidimensional constructs and the scale that this study developed will contribute to empirical research and improve understanding of CCV at the service encounter. Moreover, managers can enhance their competitive advantages by identifying and evaluating factors to facilitate CCV.

The study reconceptualized CCV, drawing on a resource-based view from S-D logic, and developed a scale to measure the degree to which customers perceive CCV. Furthermore, it achieved methodological advancement in adopting text mining of online reviews for the scale development process.

The sudden COVID-19 epidemic in 2019 has frustrated China's overall economy, and the implementation and development of the National Fitness Program has encountered huge obstacles. At a new historical starting point, in order to realize the dream of becoming a powerful country in sports, it is necessary to transform the successful experience gained since the reform and opening up into regular understanding and systematic theories, so as to make a theoretical response to the new contradictions and challenges faced in development and give full play to the National Fitness has comprehensive values and multiple functions in improving people's health, promoting people's all-round development, promoting economic and social development and demonstrating the country's cultural soft power.

Taking the topic of national fitness as an example, this paper sets out from the three dimensions of knowledge input, knowledge output and knowledge production, using citation analysis, social network analysis, co-word analysis and cluster analysis, to measure the characteristics and knowledge structure of interdisciplinary knowledge exchange.

China's national fitness is still in the primary development stage, and the strong boost of the national top-level policy is the biggest driving force of its development, driven by the policy together with the settlement of many major events, constantly improving and enriching the wings. The main body of knowledge production on the topic of national fitness is mainly colleges and universities, with low participation of government and enterprises, high degree of cooperation among authors, obvious interdisciplinary characteristics and strong application of research themes.

This study provides a strong theoretical basis for the promotion of the Healthy China strategy. Especially under the influence of COVID-19, this paper can contribute to the comprehensive value and multimodal functions of national fitness in improving the health of people, promoting economic and social development and demonstrating the soft power of national culture.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the influence of perceived quality and customer engagement on perceived value and satisfaction in a model to evaluate loyalty in users of fitness centres.

Through an online questionnaire, the study uses a large sample of 6,584 users from 44 low-cost fitness centres from different cities in Spain. After validating the measurement model, the hypotheses were tested through structural equation (SEM) modelling technique, noting the existence of significant relationships.

The results showed that two dimensions of perceived quality have a positive influence on perceived value (employees) and satisfaction (facilities). However, the enthused participation dimension of customer engagement also indicated an important impact on perceived value and satisfaction, thus confirming the influence of this dimension in the context of sports services for users' loyalty.

With a large sample, the importance of this study lies in the use of strategies to achieve a greater influence on perceived value and satisfaction, with the aim of increasing customer loyalty in fitness centres. This is why, in addition to the service quality, the influence of the customer engagement dimensions is included, which have not been previously analysed in this emerging business model.

El propósito de este trabajo es analizar la influencia de la calidad percibida y el compromiso del cliente sobre el valor percibido y la satisfacción en un modelo para evaluar la lealtad en usuarios de centros de fitness.

A través de un cuestionario online, el estudio utiliza una muestra amplia de 6.584 usuarios de 44 centros de fitness low-cost de diferentes ciudades de España. Tras validar el modelo de medida, las hipótesis fueron contrastadas utilizando análisis de ecuaciones estructurales, observándose la existencia de relaciones significativas.

Los resultados mostraron que dos dimensiones de la calidad percibida tienen una influencia positiva en el valor percibido (empleados) y la satisfacción (instalaciones). Sin embargo, la dimensión de participación entusiasta del compromiso del cliente también indicó un impacto importante en el valor percibido y la satisfacción, lo que confirma la influencia de esta dimensión en el contexto de los servicios deportivos para la fidelización de los usuarios.

Con una extensa muestra, la importancia de este estudio radica en el uso de estrategias para lograr una mayor influencia en el valor percibido y la satisfacción, con el objetivo de fidelizar a los clientes de los centros de fitness. Por eso, además de la calidad del servicio, se incluye la influencia de las dimensiones del compromiso con el cliente, que no han sido analizadas previamente en este modelo de negocio emergente.