Studying effect of social responsibility on bodybuilding clubs customers’ loyalty with moderating role of club reputation

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effect of social responsibility on bodybuilding clubs customers’ loyalty with moderating role of club reputation. The research method is descriptive and survey type and statistical population of present study consisted of entire customers of the Gonbad Kavous City bodybuilding clubs (6320 customers), which according to Cochran formula, 363 customers were selected as study sample size. To collect the research data, questionnaires of Lechuga (2012) social responsibility; Feldman (2014) reputation and Lee (2017) customers’ loyalty were used. Validity of the questionnaires was verified by 8 masters of sport management and internal consistency of questionnaires by using Cronbach's alpha was determined respectively 0.91, 0.84 and 0.87. To analyze data and identify the effects of research variables, structural equation modeling with the use of PLS software was applied. The results of the study indicate that social responsibility has significant and positive effects on club reputation (t=44.53, β=0.83). Also, the effect of social responsibility on customers loyalty was positive and significant (t=4.06, β=0.33). Another finding of the study indicated that the club's reputation has a positive and significant effect on customers loyalty (t=7.92, β=0.54). Ultimately, the effect of social responsibility on customers loyalty by the mediating role of the club's reputation was confirmed (t=2.21, β=0.07). With respect to the results of the study, it can be concluded that doing social responsibilities by bodybuilding clubs can play an important role in the club's reputation and increase the loyalty of their customers.