The impact of obesity on gym market

Student number: 822374

Abstract:

With an increasing number of children obesity in the UK even the world, the gym market is emerging and there has some good example that the gym market will become more regulated and available to more people to preventive some potential obesity-related disease in the UK.

Contents List:

1. Background information

2 What is Cause-Related Marketing?

3. An excellent example of Cause Related Marketing of who cares wins

4 Gym market with increasing number of children obesity

5 The successful children’s fitness center in the US and regulation of the field

6 Free gym in Birmingham

Literature review

1. Background information

This literature review provides background information about the project on investigating how obesity affects gym market in the UK, what about the gym market condition in the UK, how serious about obesity phenomenon in the UK.

2. What is Cause-Related Marketing?

The concept of Cause-Related Marketing (CRM) was defined in 2004 by the UK-based Business in the Community (BITC) organization to refer to a commercial activity in which a business entity and a charity or not-for profit entity cooperate by forming a partnership with each other for purposes of marketing an image, a product, or even a service for their mutual benefit (Anghel, Grigore, & Rosca, 2011). For example, the business entity contributes to directly to the causes of the charity, or allows the charity to make its own packaging on a product with the understanding that a given percentage of the revenues realized by the business entity from the sale of that product will go to the charity to support its causes. Therefore CRM can be used as a marketing tool for the business entity, while also helping to solve problems of the facing the society. (Business Case Studies, 2016).

It has been acknowledged that business and the extensive community are inseparable (Adkins, 1999). This means that in addition to satisfying all legal requirements such as licensing the business, and also having qualified personnel, a business also needs a prosperous consumer base which then provides a ready market for its products and services. Therefore, if the business is without such a healthy community, it would make the business in short supply and the potential of the business will be restricted. As such, through all aspects of business activities and also Cause-Related Marketing, the business is able to gain an advantage in the market. It is also important to note that businesses not only need to build healthy businesses, contributing towards having a healthy society too is important.

An example of Cause-Related Marketing in the UK is Tesco’s program which gives computers to schools and has been running for over ten years and delivered a staggering 84 million pounds of information communication equipment to the schools (Adkins, 1999).

Another example is the “Age UK and Innocent” where in the past ten years; Age UK groups around all country have knitted small wool caps for Innocent smoothie bottles. For every ‘behatted’ smoothie that’s sold, Innocent donates 25p to Age UK (Age UK, 2017).

4. Gym market with increasing number of children obesity

4. 1 A dramatically increasing number of childhood obesity threats the health of the children in the UK

According to the report released in 2004, childhood obesity has tripled in the past 20 years in the UK (Committee, 2004). This raises the fear that obesity will soon replace smoking as the main cause of premature deaths in adults. As such, this indicates that the UK population is a potential gym market as one of the solutions needed to combat the problem of obesity.

4.2 Gym in UK market

In 2016 alone, statistics indicate that first time British gym membership rose by more than 9 million, while gym membership increased by 5.3%, with the gym market value increasing by 3.2% (The Leisure Database Company, 2016). British gym is now estimated at 4.4 billion pounds total market capitalization. And now Britain has 6435 fitness facilities, increase than last year's 6312 (Quesnel, 2016). In relation to the released data, David Minton, director of The Leisure Database Company, argues that this is a good result in the gym market. The ascension of each core index shows that technology, innovation and take the customer as the centre of the potential of fitness products together (Quesnel, 2016).

5. Examples of successful children’s fitness centres and regulation of the field

Whereas this project focuses on the gym market in the UK, this section will offer examples both within the UK an also in the US, the purpose of including an example from the latter being to appreciate and learn from the strides made in that regard.

5.1 Successful case of My Gym in the US

My Gym is a children’s fitness center that was established over three decades ago in the United States. Its purpose was to improve children psychology of facilities to help children to be physically fit (Howlett, 2013). My Gym is only a safe place to let the children play and be coached in all sporting activities; it also provides a guide to a healthier life for the children.

5.2 The ACE provides youth fitness specific educational certifications

American Council on Exercise (ACE) provides certifications on youth trainers and specialists to ensure that they are qualified before they offer physical fitness lessons to youths. In addition, it runs a program referred to as the ACE Youth Fitness Specialist Program whose aim is to equip parents, coaches and even fitness and healthcare professional with knowledge and skills to enable the be able to develop exercise programs for children (The American Council on Exercise, 2017).

6. Free gym in Birmingham

Heart of Birmingham teaching primary care trust In Ladywood district of the city recently launched the “Gym For Free” plan. Select the area because it has a high level of obesity in children and infant mortality. And life expectancy for residents is also very short. Participants are eligible for free in the Ttie city fitness and swimming. The project aims to encourage more people to use leisure center and swimming pool. Participants are assigned a mentor and must attend four times a month fitness, fitness or swimming meeting, in order to return visit to the plan (Birmingham Wellbeing, 2017).

References

Adkins, S. (1999). Cause Related Marketing: Who Cares Wins. United Kingdom: Butterworth-Heinemann.