The Effect of Entrepreneurial Skills of Managers on Customer Attraction in Private Sport Clubs in Tehran City

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of entrepreneurial skills of managers on customer attraction in Tehran private sports clubs. This study was descriptive-survey and mixed (qualitative - quantitative) and applied in terms of aims. In the qualitative section, the entrepreneurship skills components were achieved by content analysis and semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurship and physical education professors and club managers (15 subjects) using snowball method and then managers questionnaire was designed with 51 items. The population consisted of the sport clubs and 300 clubs were selected by stratified random sampling method. In each club, the manager responded to the managers questionnaire and the clients of the same club (average 25-35 subjects) responded to the American Customer Satisfaction Standard Questionnaire (ACSI) (N=6338). Structural equation modeling was used to examine validity, reliability and fitness of latent variables and to test research hypotheses with Amos software. The results of confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the validity, reliability and fitness of latent variables. The results showed that entrepreneurial skills (personal skills and business management skills) had a significant effect on customer attraction. Also, the pioneer variable had the highest effect and the variables of marketing, independence, planning, communication, decision making, center of internal control, commercialization, risk taking and innovation respectively occupied other places. The variables of creativity and success had no significant effects on customer attraction.