SERVICE QUALITY AND ITS INFLUENCE ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AND RETENTION: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM A BADMINTON TRAINING ACADEMY

The present study examined service quality and its bearing on customer satisfaction and retention within a specialized badminton training academy, generating empirical evidence from 75 respondents through quantitative analysis. The findings position Racketry Academy as an organization with considerable service quality strengths — particularly in coaching effectiveness, interpersonal approachability, and session structure — that translate into high satisfaction and strong retention metrics. Statistical analysis using Spearman rank-order correlation and Chi-square tests of independence confirms that the sequential relationship proposed by service management theory — whereby service quality drives satisfaction, which in turn drives retention — is robustly present in this context. Coaching effectiveness emerges as the dominant explanatory variable across both satisfaction and retention outcomes, reinforcing the strategic importance of the coach as the central service delivery agent in a sports training academy. Individual attention was identified as the dimension most warranting management focus, with its comparatively lower mean score suggesting that personalization remains a partially unmet expectation among trainees. Addressing this gap, alongside incremental improvements in facility quality and perceived value, would enable the academy to deepen its service quality proposition across all dimensions. More broadly, the study contributes to the growing literature on service quality in sports training contexts by providing fine-grained, academy-level empirical evidence and demonstrating that established service quality frameworks are analytically productive in single-discipline, coach-centric settings. Future research may extend this inquiry longitudinally, incorporate objective performance metrics alongside perceptual data, or compare service quality dynamics across multiple badminton academies to enable cross-institutional bench-marking.

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