Untangling the tangibles: 'physical evidence' and customer satisfaction in local authority leisure centres

Abstract

Previous research has suggested that customer perceptions of service providers may be influenced by the tangibles of the service outlet itself, by service staff and by the service delivery processes. In leisure services little is known about the contribution of these and other elements of service to overall customer satisfaction. This paper reports the development of a customer survey instrument for UK local authority leisure centres which was used to explore the contribution of the different service dimensions to customer satisfaction. It was concluded that the survey results showed that tangible elements of the service were thought by customers to be the most important elements. These tangible elements also had the greatest impact on that variation in overall satisfaction which could be explained by the survey instrument.