Brand social representations: strategic perspectives for a fitness club
Résumé
The aim of this study was to identify an accurate tool to enable fitness club managers to discover those opinions or stereotypes which represent obstacles to joining their organisations. Starting with brand image, the analysis then considered social representations as relevant constructs for apprehending these opinions or prejudices. The use of a word association task and the model of basic cognitive schemes (Rouquette, 1990; 1994) provided access to the salient elements of the social representations of a particular sport brand and the way they are structured. The procedure combining these two stages represented a diagnostic tool for identifying the attractive and unattractive aspects of a French fitness club brand, which enabled the proposal of advice to the manager in terms of strategic and operational marketing orientations for recruiting new members.