Fitlife Health Club: Australian Market Leader In Sport And Fitness Industry Essay.

1. When is the country's next local, state, or national election? How could this change government or regional policy?
2. Could any pending legislation or taxation changes affect your business, either positively or negatively?
3. How will business regulation, along with any planned changes to it, affect your business? And is there a trend towards regulation or deregulation?
4. How does government approach corporate policy, corporate social responsibility, environmental issues, and customer protection legislation? What impact does this have, and is it likely to change?
5. What is the likely timescale of proposed legislative changes?
6. Are there any other political factors that are likely to change?
7. How stable is the current economy? Is it growing, stagnating, or declining?
8. Are key exchange rates stable, or do they tend to vary significantly?
9. Are customers' levels of disposable income rising or falling? How is this likely to change in the next few years?
10. What is the unemployment rate? Will it be easy to build a skilled workforce? Or will it be expensive to hire skilled labor?
11. Are there any other economic factors that you should consider?
12. What is the population's growth rate and age profile? How is this likely to change?
13. Are generational shifts in attitude likely to affect what you're doing?
14. What are your society's levels of health, education, and social mobility? How are these changing, and what impact does this have?

15. What employment patterns, job market trends, and attitudes toward work can you observe? Are these different for different age groups?
16. How do religious beliefs and lifestyle choices affect the population?
17. Are any other socio-cultural factors likely to drive change for your business?
18. Are there any new technologies that you could be using?
19. Are there any new technologies on the horizon that could radically affect your work or your industry?
20. Do any of your competitors have access to new technologies that could redefine their products?
21. Are there existing technological hubs that you could work with or learn from?
22. Are there any other technological factors that you should consider?

SWOT Analysis

Fitlife Heath Club is the Australian health club, which is established as one of the leader in the sport and fitness industry. It provides various fitness venues all over the country by offering various fitness related services. The Head office of Fitlife health club is in North Sydney. From there, it operates its branches in every state of the country. All the health clubs are offering the services like; swimming, recreation hall, gymnastic hall and gym for weight lifting and other exercises. The health club is working for its mission and vision with effective strategies. This marketing plan includes the marketing audit of the Fitlife by utilizing various analyses. 

The following table indicates the possible strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the Fitlife Health club.

The below graph indicates the current position and desired position of the FitLife Health Club. The graph shows the gap between both the situations (Keyzer, Finch, Dietrich, & Sekendiz, 2014).

The above BCG growth matrix indicates the growth-share matrix about the different units and activities of FitLife Health club. This includes four categories; dogs, question marks, stars and cash cows. In the matrix, star shows the units, which generate large amount of cash due to the strong market share. But, the units in this category consume huge amount of cash due to higher growth rate. For the FitLife health club, the star matrix shows that the club can generate more cash from children exercise programs, nutrition programs, body attack, Gym-cardio and Zumba (Close, 2013). These activities are very common for the Australian people, who are very health conscious, but it requires a huge cost for installing the gym equipment and machines. For nutrition programs, the fitness center has to hire a nutrition expert or dieticians. The organization has to pay demanded salary to them. FitLife should invest in these services to increase its market share.

Investments made in these services will assist the health club in introducing new and innovative health and wellness programs. The health club should drop the services like; Kendo and Boxing, as the people are less interested in these services and it has low market growth and low market share (Alpert, 2015). These dropouts can help the organization, as it can invest the cash in other services, which generated from divestiture of related assets. The health club should focus on the profitable services to achieve the marketing objectives. It should make the investment in the services, which can generate more cash and revenues in the future.

BCG Growth Matrix

There are five forces, which affect the players in an industry. The Following model indicates the fives forces for the FitLife Health Club. It includes the five forces like; Competitive rivalry, threat of new entry, bargaining power of buyers, bargaining power of suppliers and threat of substitutes (David, David & David 2016).

Feasible strategies 

At this stage, the club will start to introduce its health and fitness services in the well-established industry in Australia. It will install the equipment and exercise machines in the center (Bauer, 2012). It incurs more costs to purchase the machines and hire trainers and nutritionists. Company focuses on establishing in the market.

At this stage, the sales and revenues of club will start increasing and competition will grow. The fitness services of the health club will be identified in the market. It will start to gain market share. The customers will focus on the special services of the health club. The products and services of health club fit in the growth stage of product development life cycle.

At the maturity stage, brand image will be strong in the market. Sales of the health club continue to grow but at a decline rate in comparison to past. At this stage, it will add new services and features to the services, like; special packages and discounted packages (Andreasson, & Johansson, 2014).

This stage starts to decline the sales due to changes in the trends and economic conditions. The organization will reduce the prices of the services and packages. Company has to make an effective marketing mix for increasing the revenues. This will beneficial for the health club to grow again.

The tactics mentioned in the above segments are meeting with the legal and ethical requirements.

The Fitlife Health club is complying with all the legislations rules and regulations. It is following all the laws and regulations of the Australian government. It has taken the license for introducing its services in the city (Australian Government, 2017). The marketing tactics are aligned with the laws and regulations, which are imposed by the government.

The tactics and strategies used in this plan align with the different acts and laws of the discrimination. Fitlife is complying with the Age discrimination act, 2004 and Sex discrimination act, 1984. It is conducting the fitness sessions for all the age groups. There is not discrimination by the gender. Equal programs and training is provided to both male and female groups.

Five Forces Analysis

For this aspect, the organization is following the Privacy Act, 1988. This Australian law deals with the privacy. It states that the organization must keep the client’s information private. It includes the information privacy principles. The club will take the client’s information, but will keep it confidential. Complying the copyright legislation protects the exclusive rights of the organization.

The Fitlife Health club is complying with the AANA code of ethics. It will follow this act at the time of advertising and marketing communication activities (Australian Government, 2017). It will not provide the fake ads of their products. The products and services will be provided according to the customer expectations. It is complying with the consumer protection act, 2010.

With all the above legislations, the Fitlife health club is going ahead by following the work health and safety regulations. It is providing a good working environment and conditions to the employees, like; trainers and dieticians. Safety and health standards are taken into consideration by the health club.

Hello sir,

I am hereby attaching the marketing plan for the initiative of Fitlife health club. The plan includes all the effective strategies and marketing tactics in the tactical implementation plan. It includes internal and external analyses for the health club. All the factors, which may affect the organization, are discussed. Furthermore, it includes how the services will go through the product life cycle phases.

Here, it is request to you that kindly review the marketing plan of organization and give the feedback immediately, so that we can implement the plan in the operations. You may arrange the meeting, if there is the need for discussion. Along with this, assign the date for implementation.

Kindly revert.

Thanks & Regards

Marketing Team

FitLife Health Club

Conclusion

Thus, FitLife health club can use this marketing plan for expanding its business and services. This will assist in understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the health club. All the analyses in the above discussion include all the strengths and drawbacks of the organization. The health club should focus on the profitable services to achieve the marketing objectives. Porter’s five forces analysis shows the situation of the industry. There are some factors, which affect the growth of health club in the Australian industry.

In an organization, cross cultural communication can be a challenge. It is an increasing norm in this era. The growth in internet and technology has introduced new markets which allow the organization to promote the business to different geographic locations and cultures. A productive organization has the environment that assists the cultural diversity. There may be people at the workplace, who is from different culture and who have different cultural values, cultural beliefs and cultural practices. There must be implementation of some strategies to avoid the issues of cultural diversity (Dabija, & Abrudan, 2015). The cultural competency training program must be implemented, so that more different cultures can work together. When the company starts to recruit the new comers, it must provide the training to its existing staff about the new culture. Cross cultural training and cultural awareness assists in avoiding the misunderstanding between staff and clients from diverse cultural backgrounds. There must be a welcoming environment in the organization for new comers. Appointing a leader of a team, who is working across different cultures or who knows different languages will be beneficial for managing the cultural diversity. There are some factors, which can affect the cross-cultural communication, such as; different languages, non-verbal differences, low context vs. high context cultures and power distance.

Marketing Opportunity Options

If there are different cultures in the organization, then it must create some effective strategies to avoid the related issues in effective communication. In this, language may be the biggest barrier to both the new employee and organization. It can overcome by providing training to the employee about different cultures. The following activities can avoid the issues:

• Stay with the open mind in the unfamiliar situations
• Increase the interactions and aware to the different manners the people interact
• Understand the background off different community groups
• Encourage the people to learn about the different cultures
• Keep a personal touch

The managers in the organization can use effective communication techniques and methods to establish cross cultural communication, like; observation, feedback system, active listening, stress management etc.

An effective leader may play an important role in this context by motivating the employees. The leader must try to motivate the team members to develop a positive attitude towards the culture and working environment. He must try to boost up their confidence levels regarding the performance. By establishing an open communication with the followers, leader can inspire them. The leader must listen to them and their opinions must be taken at the time of decision making process. It will keep them motivated. The ability of leader to admire and provide the guidance to the employees has a critical impact on motivation and morale (Leitner & Guldenberg, 2010). The leader should provide the training and coaching to develop new skills and abilities for enhancing the performance. An effective leader can become an ethical leader by possessing honesty, integrity and trust. The ethical leader always inspires the team to work with the integrity and honesty for achieving the organizational goals. Thus, these strategies and methods can be used to motivate the new comers in the organization.

References

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