swot analysis

I. Executive Summary

II. Customer Situation Analysis

III. Competitor Situation Analysis

IV. Competitive Advantage/Opportunities

V. Marketing Objective

VI. Marketing Strategies

a. Product

b. Price

c. Place

d. Promotion

VII. Control/Evaluation Procedures

I. Executive Summary

Our goal is to increase the amount of stay at home parents that attend Shore Fit classes and single sessions during the hours of 11am-2pm Monday-Friday by 11% over the next two years.

Shore Fit has certain strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, as well as their competitors, like LA Fitness. Strengths that Shore Fit is known for is that it is a small gym that uses a science-based training with each of its trainers having a degree in exercise science and their professionalism for being able to build personal relationships with clients. Even with the many strengths, there are also some weaknesses, like size. The size of the gym may benefit the business but can also hurt it because it limits the space for clients to work out in while also only being able to hold a certain amount of clients at a time. The less clients that the facility can hold, the less revenue that the business makes. However, despite the weaknesses of Short Fit, they have endless opportunities. Shore Fit is a business that has the opportunity to grow and expand tremendously. Since the company is a smaller business they are able to appeal to both general health clients and athletes, and would be able to do so even more by opening new locations or eventually even franchising. A huge opportunity that Shore Fit should do to is to offer more services to their clients giving them more of a variety of services to choose from. The biggest threats that Shore Fit faces are other gyms like LA Fitness, You Fit, Powerhouse and any other gym located in Tampa. Their business is also threatened by work out videos and exercises that can be purchased for at home work outs.

LA Fitness on the other hand has their own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. LA Fitness has the strengths of being a well-known, full service gym. The company has locations scattered across the U.S. in many states which allows clients to use their membership at any location they please. They have built a reputation with people which is what makes them well-known. However, they face weaknesses as well. The main weakness of LA Fitness is how much it costs to be a member. Between the monthly fees and the enrollment fee, your first month’s total costs are extremely high. The monthly memberships are really high especially for teenagers and college kids to afford. Even though the facilities are big, the demand for machines is even higher. Sometimes the facility doesn’t have more than one of a certain machine causing clients to wait to use them. Along with Shore Fit, LA Fitness also has opportunities to grow and expand. The franchise can always expand and open up new locations in areas that they don’t already have. LA Fitness also has the threat of other gyms such as You Fit, Powerhouse and any other gym located in Tampa. Other gyms offer lower price monthly memberships and have different promotional strategies. The business that LA Fitness has could decline in the case of their customers going the cheaper way and purchasing at home work out videos, which could cause their revenue to decease.

Shore Fit has a cost competitive advantage because they have a lower cost than most gyms in the area, especially over LA Fitness. The cost of a membership at Shore Fit is much cheaper than the cost of an LA Fitness membership. Both gyms offer different services, however Shore Fit offers more of unique services than LA Fitness, giving them a product/service differentiation competitive advantage. The trainers at Shore Fit can directly interact with their clients more because it is a smaller gym. It allows for them to build more of a personal relationship with their customers. They offer over 250 personal training programs varying from sports specific, to group fitness classes, to boot camps. LA Fitness does not offer the specific kinds of training programs that Shore Fit does, giving Shore Fit an advantage against their competitors. LA Fitness may have hundreds of locations across most states, but it doesn’t mean they have the opportunity to personalize their target audience. Shore Fit, however, has the opportunity to have a smaller target audience which makes it easier for them to promote and advertise to a specific audience, instead of a general audience, giving them a niche competitive advantage. Due to them being a small company and having giant competitors, they resort to building a cliental off of a limited geographic market.

If Shore Fit were to offer child care, they could expand their target market over to stay at home parents, or even just parents in general who do not have the opportunity to go to the gym or take a session. Expanding their promotional strategies and how much they advertise should be something to look into, if the gym advertises more of all the services they offer, more people would know that the opportunity is there.

**add main points from Marketing Strategies (4 Ps) and Control/Evaluation Procedures

II. Customer Situation Analysis (Shore Fit)

Shore Fit has numerous strengths in which has been used to brand the company. The biggest strength Shore Fit holds is that it is a small gym that uses a science-based training with each of its trainers having a degree in exercise science. Along with their professionalism, the trainers are able to build relationships with clients to push them to reach their peak performance whether it is in a one-on-one session or group classes. The gym has a good reputation with the people who have been there and have been long term customers. With the gym being a smaller gym than most in the area, it allows the trainers and employees to build a relationship with their customers rather than just seeing them come and go every day. Another strength that Shore Fit has against its competitors is that it is a 24 hour all access facility, there is just specific hours for sales throughout the week.

Along with its strengths, Shore Fit has weaknesses. Although having a smaller gym has its benefits, it also limits the space for clients to work out, along with only being able to hold a certain amount of clients at a time. This in turn, minimizes revenue. While it is the smaller gym in Tampa, the bigger gyms in the area are more well-known, therefore they get more of a business than Shore Fit.

Shore Fit is a niche-based business. This gives the company a lot of room for growth. Shore Fit has a target market of general health clients along with athletes who they are able to appeal to. Since the company is a smaller business they are able to appeal to both of these markets and would be able to do so even more by opening new locations or eventually even franchising. Shore Fit also has the opportunity to expand in its Tampa location, opening a bigger gym or offering more services at its location to attract new customers. Offering new services, depending on the type of service, can attract a different market of customers to the gym.

Since Shore fit does attract both general health clients looking to either lose weight, or gain muscle as well as athletes they have two different types of threats. The first are the general gyms such as LA Fitness, You Fit and Powerhouse for all of the general health clients. For athletes the threats that Shore Fit faces are other smaller gyms in the greater Tampa area. These gyms bring in teams and clubs for group training along with individual athletes much like shore fit. When you think of a company that threatens the business at Shore Fit, you think other gyms, most people don’t think of the at home work-out remedies and videos that have become very popular lately. When a customer buys at home work-out videos or machines, it makes it so that more people do not have to get gym memberships and get to just work-out at home. With the videos becoming popular, it threatens Short Fit because then people do not have to pay for memberships or sessions at the gym, they can just work-out at home, causing the business to lose revenue.

III. Competitor Situation Analysis (LA Fitness)

A competitor for Shore Fit in the Tampa area is LA Fitness. LA Fitness is a well-known full-service gym, which attracts all types of health-enthusiasts. LA Fitness did a great job building their company so that customers spend hours there due to all of their amenities such as pools, steam rooms and basketball courts, bicycle rooms, private work out rooms, saunas, along with free weights and machines. LA Fitness is a company that is known all over the U.S. and has built a relationship with their customers to where they stay. They benefit from the fact that they have so many locations because your membership can be used at any of the locations located throughout most of the U.S. LA Fitness offers services and classes of all kinds that their customers can choose from.

A major weakness for LA Fitness is the price to be a member. It is a very expensive monthly payment for people such as teenagers and college students looking to workout. Majority of the time LA Fitness has a very high enrollment fee when getting a membership. The membership fees themselves are very expensive, plus the enrollment fee they charge you with then you sign up. Another weakness known by people in the workout world is how open the facilities are. For many customers, especially women, the open facility where everyone can see you working out is not very appealing. The machines in most of the facilities are close together, not giving customers enough space to themselves. Another weakness that LA Fitness has with being so high volume, is the wait to use certain machines. Sometimes the facility doesn’t have multiple machines of the same kind, so when it is busy in the gym, you may have to wait a while for that specific machine. Which may throw off your entire workout routine.

LA Fitness has many locations throughout the U.S., but not necessarily in any state. They have the opportunity to expand more by opening more facilities in the states and areas that they do not currently have. Overall, they have the advantage over most of the smaller gyms because of how well-known they are throughout most areas. With LA Fitness having as many locations as it does, it opens up the opportunity for employment. It may also motivate customers to attend school to work in the fitness industry.

Although LA Fitness is a well-known, high-class, franchised gym, it does have threats that look to take business from them by reducing their monthly cost and using different promotional strategies. These gyms include You Fit, Caltas Fitness and Powerhouse Gym amongst many others. Although LA Fitness is widely-known, most of the time there are less expensive gyms in the same area of LA Fitness. If customers find out about these less expensive gyms, LA Fitness may lose their customer base due to customers switching to somewhere more affordable, causing them to lose revenue.

IV. Competitive Advantages/Opportunities

Shore Fit may not be the biggest gym out there, and may not be as big as LA Fitness, but that doesn’t mean that the gym doesn’t have any advantages over LA Fitness. Shore Fit has a cost competitive advantage because they have a lower cost than most gyms in the area, especially over LA Fitness. The cost of a membership at Shore Fit is much cheaper than the cost of an LA Fitness membership. Both gyms offer different services, however Shore Fit offers more of unique services than LA Fitness, giving them a product/service differentiation competitive advantage. The services they offer resemble the ones offered at LA Fitness, how are much different. The trainers at Shore Fit can directly interact with their clients more because it is a smaller gym. It allows for them to build more of a personal relationship with their customers. Which also allows them to see how much they grow and develop throughout their time at Shore Fit. For being a small gym, Shore Fit still offers a lot of different options for programs. They offer over 250 personal training programs varying from sports specific, to group fitness classes, to boot camps. LA Fitness does not offer the specific kinds of training programs that Shore Fit does, giving Shore Fit an advantage against their competitors. With LA Fitness being a gym that has hundreds of locations across most states, it doesn’t give them the opportunity to personalize their target audience. Their goals are to promote to everyone and anyone just to gain more clients. While Shore Fit has a smaller target audience making it easier for them to promote and advertise to a specific audience giving them a niche competitive advantage. Due to them being a small company and having giant competitors, they resort to building a cliental off of a limited geographic market. As long as they stay focused on their specific market, they have that advantage over LA Fitness.

Markets for gym memberships are always in high demand, there are new people constantly signing up for gym memberships, or attending single sessions/days, or even considering signing up. Many gyms have started to offer child care inside their facilities so that parents who do not have someone to watch their kids, can come to enjoy the gym and get a good work out in. If Shore Fit were to offer child care, they could expand their target market over to stay at home parents, or even just parents in general who do not have the opportunity to go to the gym or take a session. Shore Fit is more of a gym for programs, rather than an open gym to come and go as you please like other gyms in the area. If they expanded, they could have the opportunity to offer more options in machines and services. Expanding their promotional strategies and how much they advertise should be something to look into, if the gym advertises more of all the services they offer, more people would know that the opportunity is there. add more opportunities that exist in the market that your client should take advantage of, and how. If anymore can be thought of, if more are added. Add main points to executive summary as well.

V. Marketing Objective

Our goal is to increase the amount of stay at home parents that attend Shore Fit classes and single sessions during the hours of 11am-2pm Monday-Friday by 11% over the next two years.

VI. Marketing Strategies

Product

Shore Fit caters to a niche market of general health clients as well as athletes. These clients are trained through high intensity interval training. Owner, Phil Gilchrist, and his team of trainers have decided to follow this method of training because it is scientifically proven to be the best way to lose fat and build muscle at the same time. They also hold pride in the fact that every one of their trainers have graduated college with a four-year degree in athletic training, unlike most personal trainers who are only required to have a personal training certificate, which only takes about 30 days to acquire.

In order to increase mid-day sales, Phil is looking to add in boot-camp classes for stay at home parents. At this time of the day there are limited people working out and could raise revenue by about four thousand dollars a month just by filling one half-hour time slot.

Price

Shore Fit runs their programs on a monthly basis with no contracts or gym membership fees. There are options to attend training classes either one, two, three or four times per week. They use a flexible pricing strategy to come up with their prices for their customers as seen below:

There are two reasons why they decide to use a flexible pricing strategy. One is the business side. Shore Fit is making more money per month off of the clients who come in more. These clients also think they are getting a better deal because they are paying less per visit, which gets them to keep coming back. There is also a psychological logic for using this pricing strategy, which is that the prices incentivize clients to come more times a week due to the lower cost per visit. The more times that they come per week the faster they will see results in their body, which makes the company look good.

Place

Social Media (Facebook/ twitter)

Fliers to elementary and middle schools in the area

Promotion

Smaller businesses whom do not have a marketing budget succeed off of the quality of their service. Shore Fit’s main source of marketing has been their reputation. The problem with drawing in stay at home parents is that they are typically at home in order to take care of their children. The solution to this is to also provide complimentary child care during these sessions so that parents have the opportunity and ability to be able to attend a class or the gym itself.

The promotions would start on the already existing social media outlets such as Facebook and twitter. Other places to promote the gym and child care would be public places that stay at home parents would go to throughout the day where they would be able to see the advertisements, not just on social media pages because not everyone has one. The best times to promote to parents would be early mornings, midafternoons, or evenings, generally when they are up and possibly out running errands with the children. Certain appeals such as health and convenience would be used within our advertisements to attract parents. The advertisement would look like: (Insert flier)

VIII. Control/Evaluation Procedures

Increase outside foot

11-2

“Stay at home mom boot-camp” with child care

promote at schools, social media, client referral

have over 70 clients now

started with students after graduation, then grew through word of mouth