Ng'an'ga, David Muigai2011-08-092011-08-092011-08-09http://ir-library.ku.ac.ke/handle/123456789/640Department of exercise, recreation and sports, 158p. The GV 428.5 .M8 2009This study sought to establish the relationship amongst market orientation, service quality, firm innovativeness and firm performance within fitness enterprises in Kenya. These are important strategic marketing and development facets whose outcomes impact profitability and growth, hence need to establish their utilization and practice within the fast growing fitness industry in Kenya. Using a purposive sampling method 77 enterprises were obtained from secondary sources while another 69 enterprises were identified through snowball sampling technique using key informants. In total this yielded 146 enterprises from which 191 managers were identified as key informants to participate in this study. To sample the 1283 clients who took part in the study, the mall intercept method was used. Questionnaires were used to collect data. Two instruments (in form of questionnaires) were used in this study; one for clients and the other for the managers. The resulting data were analyzed using principal components analysis, the Pearson's product moment correlation and multiple regression analysis. The results demonstrated significance of market orientation and innovation as key contributors toward fitness firm performance but failed to show any significance for service quality. The results indicated that relationships do exist on perceptions of service quality from clients based upon demographic characteristics (trainings per week, employment status, age of the client and gender of the client of participant). The multivariate regression results demonstrated that the dimensions of market orientation and firm innovation developed for this study greatly impacted firm performance. Firm innovation moderated the market orientation firm performance relationship; however, service quality failed to show any mediation effect on these two variables. This study found that higher service quality resulted in higher customer satisfaction. Results suggested that managers must understand and appreciate the concerns of clients in regard to services that they offer and in particular with regards to the tangibles elements. The findings also revealed that the tangibles, reliability, responsiveness/ assurance and empathy dimensions significantly led to increases in the overall satisfaction evaluation of services that the firm provides. The tangibles dimension was most significant. The ability to attract and retain customers through providing excellent service quality is a necessity for any business in every field. From this study, it was recommended that in a bid to consistently provide high quality service, fitness firms must first know how to measure and identify areas of needed improvement. Key in this process is the customer relationship management process which is internal to the firms' operations. It is also imperative that fitness managers determine what constitutes market orientation, innovation and service quality within their cultural context for optimizing service and satisfaction to fitness customersenThesis