GYMetrix - Blog - Men are frustrated by a lack of their favourite Gym Equipment!

Men are frustrated by a lack of their favourite Gym Equipment!

Analysing approximately 15,000 gym floor surveys that GYMetrix has done, across all sectors, reveals that men are generally more frustrated than women because there is not enough of the gym equipment they want to use. This translates to men being generally less satisfied with their gyms overall, with lower Net Promoter Scores (customer satisfaction scores).

What are your top 3 favourite types of gym equipment you like to use?
GYMetrix not only attaches sensors to gym equipment to measure its usage, we also conduct face to face gym floor surveys asking customers what are their favourite 3 types of gym equipment. It enables us to see the different equipment choices that men and women make in a gym. Here are the results!
Male Top 10   Female Top 10  
1. Treadmill   1. Treadmill  
2. Cable Machines   2. Crosstrainers  
3. Dumbbells   3. Upright Cycles  
4. Bench   4. Rower  
5. Crosstrainer   5. Recline Cycle  
6. Upright Cycle   6. Hip Ab/dductors  
7. Rower   7. Powerplate  
8. Lateral Pulldown   8. Stepper / Stairmaster  
9. Smith machine   9. Dumbbells  
10. Chest Press               10. Leg Press  

Busy? Does it bother you?
We then ask the customers to match each equipment type to a statement that best describes how busy they find the equipment. This enables us to identify equipment bottlenecks that are causing customer frustration. The height of the bars in the graphs below tell us how popular the equipment type is, the red in the graph tells us if there are bottlenecks causing customer frustration.
[chart] 10 top most popular Gym Equipment Types for men
[chart] Top 10 most popular Gym Equipment Types for women

It is obvious how much more red there is in the Male graph than the Female graph illustrating how much more frustration there is due to there being equipment bottlenecks, and Male customers not being able to easily access their favourite equipment.

Is this why Males are less Satisfied with their Gyms than Women?
In almost every single study GYMetrix has done the Net Promoter Score (Customer satisfaction) is lower for men than for women. Overall it is Male 36 Vs Female 52 - 16 points lower.

However it is not just us that has measured this. In Ray Algars 2012 UK Low-Cost GYM sector report the Net Promoter Score for Males was 41 vs 52 for Females 11 points lower and in a recent email survey conducted in partnership with Leisure-Net the Males Net Promoter Score was 27 points lower than Females.

We now know that equipment availability is very important for gym floor customers, is this lower service level to males resulting in them not being as happy as females across the UK Gym industry?

It matters because Males still make up the majority of Gym Floor Customers
GYMetrix has started to so Male Vs Female customers counts on the gym floor when we are doing studies. It has revealed that in peak periods the majority of customers on a gym floor are male, generally 60% - 65%. There are many female members who join a gym and just use classes.

FREE e-mail survey to help you identify equipment bottlenecks in your gym.
Do you think you potentially have equipment bottlenecks in your gym? Especially in January? Get in touch and we will do an e-mail survey of your customers with the above question and analyse the responses with our bespoke software for Free, helping you spot where equipment shortages are causing your customers frustration.