Rosen, the chief operating officer of Equinox, the upscale fitness chain. “Most of these businesses want to sign you up and hope you don’t show up,” says Scott M. Still, some health clubs are trying to have their customers visit the gym more regularly. “You don’t have anybody who has to service them - other than charging their credit or debit card every month.” “You don’t have any equipment depreciation,” says Sean Naughton, an analyst at Piper Jaffray. These no-shows are great customers for the gyms. In any given month, one-fifth of a gym’s members are typically inactive, club executives say. “They are not getting their money’s worth.” “People overestimate their future attendance,” Professor DellaVigna says. People who seldom use their pay-by-the-month plans often don’t get around to canceling them, the study found. People might want to do the math before joining a gym, says Stefano DellaVigna, an associate professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-author of a study titled “Paying Not to Go to The Gym.” From an economics standpoint, he says, many people would be better off paying per visit than signing up for a rolling monthly membership. But clubs reported that members typically visit only 54 times, or slightly more than once a week. Health clubs in the United States had more than 50 million members and revenue of $20.3 billion in 2010, according to the latest data from the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association, an industry trade group. Only a fraction of members work out twice a week or more, despite all those monthly dues. “The resolutioners always pop up,” says Scott Hamann, an analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets covering the fitness industry.īut you probably know what happens next. Given that about a third of all members tend to turn over every year, the resolution crowd is crucial. JANUARY is the most important month of the year in the health club industry. But some stop-smoking and weight-loss programs, as well as gyms, are trying to help for the long haul, a strategy that can improve customers’ chances of success and, for companies like Weight Watchers International, build brand loyalty and revenue. The hard work of changing a lifestyle isn’t as alluring as dropping 30 pounds in 30 days. If exercise tapes, dietetic meals, nicotine lozenges and personal finance apps worked by themselves, we’d all be fit, thin, smoke-free and rich. After all, it’s hard for people to shake the underlying conditions - like stress or anxiety - that cause unwanted habits. Supposed easy remedies like celebrity diets hold a powerful allure, but they rarely work in the long term, she says. “If I try one quick fix and it doesn’t work, I may be more likely to try the next quick fix,” says Lisa Lahey, the co-founder of Minds at Work, a consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass., which coaches executives and educators in sustained behavior change. So the next year, we try - and pay up - again. But by March, the lines thin at the treadmills and many dieters relapse. Memberships for health clubs and weight-loss programs spike each January, says John LaRosa, the president of Marketdata. Last year, we spent $62 billion on health club memberships, weight-loss programs, exercise tapes, diet soda and the like, according to projections from Marketdata Enterprises, a market research firm. It’s an industry that thrives on our failure to change: recidivism is good for the bottom line.Īmericans spend many tens of billions every year in the hope of keeping resolutions to lose weight, get fit, quit smoking, fix their finances, organize their closets - on and on. Our collective failure to keep our resolutions represents an annuity of sorts for health clubs, weight-loss centers and other enterprises that make up what you might call the self-improvement industry. Which, it turns out, is great for business. Like many Americans who’ve made resolutions for 2012, I made these very same New Year’s promises about this time last year. I will kick that $4.20-a-day cappuccino habit. I will hit the gym more than once a month. THIS year, I swear, I will lose those 10 pounds.
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