Emerging Industry: Fitness Clubs The fitness industry is a prime example of a brick and mortar enterprise with analytical potential that is currently underserved. Why Fitness Clubs? Easy access to analytic information The structure and facilitation of a fitness club make it an ideal candidate to utilize analytics to enhance its overall experience for its members. Every time a client visits the gym, this data is built upon by way of attendance, class sign ups, purchase history, etc., providing more than enough information for analysts to gauge client behavior. Analytics intelligence to structure a gym Furthermore, analytics can play an integral role in organizing a fitness club’s schedule. Since peak hours at fitness clubs can drastically vary for different client demographics (older members tend to work out in the morning compared to younger members at night, etc), analytics can use prior class attendance records and reviews to predict the best classes and most popular instructors for the proper time of day. Similarly, by tracking demographics during peak hours, classes can be organized around times where certain clients are more likely to attend. When this data is categorized and compared to patterns exhibited by former clients who terminated their contracts, overall retention ratios can be predicted and individual at-risk clients can be easily identified. Once identified, fitness club owners have the unique advantage to disrupt retention predictions by targeting at-risk members with customized marketing campaigns and offers to draw them back in. The digital era is here and business leaders, including fitness club owners, need to adapt accordingly.
The relationship between business and technology is undergoing an undeniable transformation across the board.
While technology’s traditional role in business has been to optimize efficiency and streamline operations, new applications of technology have grown to now drive business innovation, creativity, and strategy.
In an age dominated by consumer satisfaction, implementing technology that can gauge common trends and behavior of its clients is now businesses’ most powerful tool to meet market demands.
To do this, there needs to be a company-wide buy-in, from the top down in order to facilitate an entire enterprises’ growth and pivot towards digital innovation.
Ironically, this business-altering technology is not just attainable through complex analytics software, but can actually be performed just as well by a human being. Behold, the power of the modern-day data analyst.
By executing a strategy based on consumer patterns instead of antiquated projections, businesses go directly to the source to enhance the customer experience in tandem with their own initiatives. This data can prove to be invaluable both in terms of customer acquisition and sustaining client satisfaction with services.
Furthermore, this approach naturally pushes businesses to meaningfully engage with their clients on the new level expected in the modern climate of the corporate world.
The inevitability of analytics-based business
This digital transition is gradual and unavoidable, but not without incident.
Apart from general and cultural pushback from long-standing businesses to adapt to data-driven technology, the most pressing issue facing digital transformation is the lack of adequate talent to implement this change.
In fact, 65% of CIOs state that the technical skills shortage is directly impeding the current state and potential growth of modern businesses and needs to be prioritized.
Similarly, John Chambers, CEO of Cisco for 20 odd years, predicted that one-third of businesses today will not survive the next ten years because they will not keep pace digitally, cautioning, “Either we disrupt or we get disrupted.”
The main barrier to this progress is a matter of perspective: Instead of holding firm to traditional corporate values, business leaders need to establish new cultures advocating continuous learning and implementation of accessible technology.
Use Case: Target
The potential of modern analyst capabilities cannot be understated. Take for example Andrew Pole, the man who casually used analytics to predict if a given client shopping at Target was pregnant in 2010.
As part of an outreach campaign, Target planned to appeal to soon-to-be moms with great deals and offers for all their pregnancy and newborn needs. Pole found that expectant mothers were more likely to make specific purchases, like large purses, particular vitamins, and organic cosmetics.
He then devised an algorithm that compared purchase history to customer demographics to determine the probability that a female shopper was pregnant. If client patterns fell within the parameters, she would be given maternity related coupons.
His algorithm turned out to be so accurate that when a father angrily confronted a Target manager about why his young daughter was given these coupons by an employee, he returned several days later to apologize when his daughter finally confessed that she was pregnant.
While Pole’s use of big data for Brick and Mortar retail was neither the first nor last of its kind, it nonetheless set the stage for how custom built analytics can be instrumental in driving revenue in accordance with its consumer base.
Emerging Industry: Fitness Clubs
The fitness industry is a prime example of a brick and mortar enterprise with analytical potential that is currently underserved. Health and wellness as an enterprise has grown exponentially over the last decade.
Consider technological developments that have become common phone features: Applications can now easily track, monitor and log anything from distances to net calories to muscle gain.
Similarly, advancements in fitness-adjacent spheres like injury prevention/rehabilitation technology, optimized yet fashionable athletic clothes, and heart rate monitors…
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