Levitt (1983) maintains that "complaints are a necessity, and one of the surest signs of a bad or declining relationship is the absence of complaints from the customer. Nobody is ever that satisfied, especially not over an extended period of time." Many service business organizations consider customer complaint management, especially effective service recovery, to be an essential relationship marketing strategy for increasing customer commitment and building customer loyalty. The present study examined a conceptual process model of consumer complaint behavior in commercial sport and fitness clubs (CSFCs). Data were collected from a total usable sample of 871 members of three national chain CSFCs (response rate, 93.3% of the necessary sample size of 934). The statistical techniques employed were factor analysis, principal component analysis, Cronbach's reliability analysis, chi-square test, t-test, and one-way ANOVA. The main findings are summarized as follows: 1) Using factor analysis, seven dimensions of perceived service quality (PSQ) emerged: empathy, affinity, assurance, tangibles, responsiveness, competence, and place. 2) PSQ, particularly the four factors of empathy, tangibles, responsiveness, and competence, had a significant effect on negative service evaluation with respect to customer satisfaction. In addition, there was a significant relationship between customer satisfaction and club members' complaint behavior (CB) at a 0.1% level. 3) A total of 42.1% of club members expressed some dissatisfaction with CSFC services. Of the dissatisfied members, 56.7% took no action (potential CB), whereas 43.3% exhibited CB. Of the members who exhibited CB, 61.9% took some form of public action, 8.4% took some form of private action, and 29.7% took a combination of private and public action. 4) A high level of service recovery did not significantly increase members' psychological commitment to the CSFCs, suggesting that the "service recovery paradox" is not applicable to customer complaint management in CSFCs. In the present study, the managerial implications of these results are discussed and tasks for future research are identified.

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Practitioners involved in management have independent outlooks and subjective viewpoints, and act based on individual knowledge obtained through experience. Physical education teachers typically have roles as sport and physical education management practitioners. The purpose of this article is to describe physical education teachers' ways of looking at and thinking about factors that lead to action, using the concept of belief, and to clarify the meaning of teachers' actions. A belief held by a person, through linkage with other beliefs held by that person, becomes a factor in a belief system. The beliefs found at the core of an individual's belief system are those that are formed and strengthened by experience throughout the person's life. These beliefs, referred to as "central beliefs" in this article, significantly affect the person's actions. In the present survey, two physical education teachers were selected as subjects, and ethnographic descriptions using mainly participant observations and semi-structured interviews were carried out, along with life history descriptions to infer and analyze the subjects' central beliefs. The main results were as follows. The physical education teachers held two kinds of beliefs: beliefs associated with values, corresponding to terminal goals and ideals; and beliefs that promote the teacher's awareness of specific problems. These types of beliefs have different effects on physical education teachers. The former beliefs lead teachers to take action in order to achieve their terminal goals or ideals, while the latter beliefs help teachers to resolve more immediate problems. Sharing value-associated beliefs with co-workers is difficult, and because these beliefs represent goals formed through life experience, the expression of such beliefs may give rise to conflict. In contrast, beliefs on specific subjects are easy to share among co-workers, and thus give a uniform direction to teachers' actions toward the achievement of individual goals. However, with regard to beliefs on specific subjects, physical education teachers often choose not to discuss their values with others in order to avoid expressing their value-based beliefs. Therefore, while the beliefs of physical education teachers related to specific subjects contribute to the superficial integration of their goals, teachers rarely share individual values, principles, and ideals, delaying cooperation and innovation among teachers.

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This paper reports one analysis using game theory and three economic experiments concerning golf course membership marketing transactions, focusing on asymmetric information about the price of memberships in the market and the financial conditions of the golf course. First, using game theory, we determined whether members would profit more from selling a golf course membership on the market or redeeming the membership at the golf course. We found that theoretically, during an economic depression, members can profit more from redeeming the membership. We then conducted three economic experiments. In the first experiment, we set up a mock market in a classroom and asked college students to act as buyers and traders of golf course memberships. In the second experiment, a computer game we developed was used to observe how the subjects decided to either sell or redeem their memberships to maximize their profit. In the third experiment, using the ultimatum game, college students took the roles of golf course owners and members. We compared the negotiation processes of owners and members according to whether information regarding the financial conditions of the golf course was disclosed to members. The results of these experiments indicated that asymmetric information influences negotiations among stockholders regarding golf course memberships. The present findings suggest that game theory and economic experiments have useful applications in the field of sport marketing.

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