Bally Total Fitness - Essay 1

Bally Total Fitness Bally Total Fitness started with a different competitive strategy than they currently have. Bally began with a differentiation competitive strategy. Bally would sign clients to a 36 month contract, charge an initiation fee between 49 and 99 dollars, and then charge a monthly membership fee between 19 and 39 dollars. Bally’s differentiation strategy worked early on because of them being the US leader in the membership fitness industry. Also, Bally could charge a premium and sign customers to longer contract agreements because of their size, facilities, exercise products, and nutritional products offered. But, in 2004, Bally started to receive negative customer feedback in concerns to competitive and pricing strategies. Customers no longer wanted to sign and commit to a 3 year contract, but to have something more short-term. So, to adapt to customer needs, Bally changed their competitive strategy. Bally’s changed their competitive strategy to more of a cost leadership, by implementing a pay-as-you-go membership program. Bally’s pay-as-you-go membership program freed up members from signing a 3 year contract and showed considerable acceptance among members and new members.
Competition
YMCA YMCA’s competitive business strategy is cost leadership. Each YMCA is independent and sets its own membership fees. For the most part YMCA’s are considered non-profit organizations and their goal is to help out the community rather than earn huge profits. Therefore, some YMCAs wouldn’t have set membership fees; they would base their fees off of individual or family income to make it affordable to the surrounding community.
Gold’s Gym Gold’s Gym has more of a differentiation competitive strategy. Though it doesn’t mention membership prices in the text, Gold’s received a lot of national attention. In the 1970’s Gold’s was nicknamed “The Mecca of Bodybuilding”, and was featured in the 1977 movie Pumping Iron starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Gold’s Gym has