Customer Expectations of Sport Organisations

Abstract

As a consequence of increasing expectations of sport services, this paper presents an argument for extending service quality research into the area of customer expectations of sport organisations. It is proposed that the orientation of research should move from primarily focusing on quality improvement to an understanding of how customer expectations are created and how they can be influenced. The paper presents a review of service quality literature that considers the role of expectations in service quality, types of customer expectations and their formation. It also considers potential interventions in the formation of expectations. From this review it is apparent that there is little in the service quality field that applies expectations to sport organisations. Consequently, it is argued that future research should address this gap and in particular focus on the concepts of image, fandom, customer education and segmentation.

Notes

1. In this article the word customer is used to refer to an organisation's main stakeholders, such as facility users, visitors, fans, funding providers or members.