Analysis of loyalty and future intentions of the users of the golf courses in Andalusia, Spain

Spain is a European leader as a golf tourism destination, and Andalusia is the region that receives the most tourism in this sector, boosting not only the golf industry but also the percentage of income overall. Thus, user loyalty and knowing the future intentions of users is a matter of vital importance in these sports organizations. This study analyses 636 users of 17 golf courses in Andalusia –73.43% men and 26.42% women– and with an average age of 50.2 ± 15.6. The results show that more than 70% of users would encourage their families to play on the golf course and recommend it in more than 75% of them. In conclusion, this study emphasises the need for the use of the adapted tool, as it is a valid and reliable instrument that guides on the aspects demanded by the user as well as how to build loyalty.


Introduction
A million golf tourists have visited Spain since 2012, according to the International Association of Golf Tour Operators (IAGTO). This association ranks Spain second most popular in the world as a destination for foreign tourists whose travel is motivated by golf. Golf tourism generates an expenditure of around 1.2 billion euros (IAGTO, 2013(IAGTO, , 2019. Spanish Golf Federation (RFEG) said that Spain is considered a leading country in golf growth, and has 271,170 players as of January 1st, 2019 (RFEG, 2019).
Spain is the first choice of golf destination for 29% of European tourists, with British tourists being the largest group (KPMG, 2017). Favourable weather conditions and the lack of geopolitical problems compared to direct competitors such as North Africa, Egypt and Turkey are some of the factors that contribute to this prominence (Pinero, 2017); which has led to a rapid increase in this type of facility, not without creating a broad social debate about the environmental impacts involved (Vargas-Sánchez and Riquel-Ligero, 2015).
Golf is an economic engine that also drives other industries (Barciela, 2017), such as tourism. According to Aymerich and Anabitarte (2016), 41% of the rounds played in Spanish golf courses are by foreign players. According to a study carried out by Global Business Partners in 2016, golf generates more than 2 billion euros per year in revenue in Spain, as well as 11,000 jobs and 1.1 million tourists.
Andalusia has become the most important destination for golf tourism in Spain, with exponential growth in the number of golf courses that complete the tourism and leisure offer (Riquel-Ligero and Vargas-Sánchez, 2012). Currently, there are 349 golf courses in Spain, of which 93 (26.65%) are located in Andalusia (RFAG, 2019). Although golf tourism generates significant profits, the golf courses are frequently questioned about their close relationship with the environment and, consequently, their possible adverse impact on it. The golf courses have adopted an environmental regulation more rigorous in recent years by the Andalusian Government (López-Bonilla, Reyes-Rodriguez and López-Bonilla, 2018).
The golf tourism in Andalusia is characterised by a high degree of loyalty among users, low seasonality and expenditure over 100€ per day (Pradas and García-Tascón, 2019a) and the scale 'Big-five' model, on the Brand Personality Scale, can identify attributes that stakeholders consider to be essential for a golf destination (Pereira, Correia and Schutz, 2015).
One of the most important purposes of sports services is to meet the user's future intentions.
Consequently, it is of paramount importance to analyse the user's loyalty, as it has become one of the main objectives in sports management (Cáslavová, Pecinová, Ruda and Šíma, 2018;García, Alguacil, and Molina, 2020); and examine how loyalty influences the relationship between customer satisfaction and repurchase intention (Woo, 2017;Yi and La, 2004) or the relationship between team loyalty, sponsorship awareness, attitude toward the sponsor, and purchase intentions (Biscaia, Correia, Rosado, Ross, and Maroco, 2013;Wakefield, 2016 ).
Loyalty for Liat, Mansori and Huei (2014) is defined as commitment toward preferred products or services. Also, loyalty is defined as the repeating purchases and/or a recommendation to the third party by consumers (Kuhn, Bendesa, Wiranatha, and Oka-Suryawardani, 2019a) therefore, considering golf as an industry that offers products and/or services, this concept could be applied.
The loyalty of users in any type of organisation is vitally important, being one of the elements that guarantee not only the benefits, but also the permanence and growth of the same (Crosby and Johnson, 2008;Van Asperen, De Rooij, and Dijkmans, 2018). Customer loyalty has many benefits, economic and non-economic, so the implementation and continuous improvement of loyalty programs are becoming a strategy to maximise the benefits to companies (Chen and Quester, 2006;Pradas and García-Tascón, 2019b) or knowing the degree of customer loyalty with low-quality perceptions (García-Fernández, Sánchez-Oliver, Grimaldi-Puyana, Ferné-Gavira, and Gálvez-Ruíz, 2017).
Studies on the perceived quality of services are intended to find out what factors are related to the retention of users, as well as to know what reasons lead the user to leave a sports centre (Martínez and Martínez 2009;Nuviala, Grao, Pérez and Nuviala, 2012;Tsitskari, Tsiotras, and Tsiotras, 2006).
Loyalty in the sports sector has been evaluated by means of instruments that reflect both the behavioural approach (Pinillos, 2004;Triadó and Aparicio, 2004) and the attitudinal approach (Bodet, 2012;Wei, Hung, Yang, and Jui, 2010), as well as a scale in Spanish (Nuviala et al., 2014).
Likewise, it tackles the study on the situation of golf and tourism in Andalusian region (Paniza, 2005(Paniza, , 2010, golf as a tourist product (García-Fernández et al., 2013), or the analysis of loyalty of users of a golf course in the Region of Murcia (Cavas-García, Díaz-Suárez, and Martínez-Moreno, 2018). Studies have also been conducted regarding the design and implementation of an internal control system to optimise the use of human, material and financial resources in a golf club (Pincay-Quimiz and Romero-Maquilon, 2015).
For these reasons, the main objective of this study is to focus on analysing future behavioural intentions and loyalty of golf users in the Spanish region of Andalusia; based on the sociodemographic profile (sex and country of residence).

Method
It is a descriptive, non-experimental and cross-cutting/transversal study which aims to analyse the loyalty of golf course users in Andalusia.

Participants
To calculate the sample size, a standard error of 5%, a confidence level of 95%, and p = 0.5 were initially set, obtaining a corrected sample size equal to 381. It was then decided to increase the accuracy of the study by fixing a standard error of no more than 4%, resulting in a final sample of 636 users from 17 golf courses in Andalusia. A total of n = 16 users were eliminated due to experimental mortality by not responding to one or more of the items that made up the questionnaire. Respondents voluntarily agreed to carry out the study, provided they met the following inclusion criteria: 1. Over 18 years old.
2. User of the golf course.
3. Handicap (a license granted by the RFEG to allow the player to go out to play the course and measure their level of play).
Regarding the main characteristics of the sample, the average age of the user was 50.2 ± 15.6 years and 73.43% of the users were men and 26.42% of women. In addition, 59.51% of the users were Spanish, 11.81% were from the United Kingdom, and 9.05% from Sweden.

Instrument
The instrument used to carry out this study is based on the Zeithaml, Berry and Parasuraman (1996) Behaviour Intentions Scale, translated and adapted to tourism services by Setó (2003), and validated by Nuviala et al. (2014) for users of sports services. Pradas (2016) adapted the tool for golf courses by using the validation of Nuviala et al. (2014) to replace the terms 'sports organisations' and/or 'sports services' with 'golf courses' or 'sports facilities' in the final version of the tool.
The questionnaire (see Appendix) consisted of a battery of 13 items that were intended to measure a wide range of behavioural intentions based on the user's opinions related to loyalty to the golf course, through a Likert 1-5 scale (1. Totally Disagree, 2. Disagree, 3. Neither agree nor disagree, 4. Agree, 5. Totally agree).
Furthermore, for a better understanding, the variables have been grouped into three categories: 'loyalty' refers to the intention to repurchase and recommend the golf course (V1-V5), 'price sensation' (V6-V9), and 'response' (V10-V13). These dimensions make it possible to relate the concept of fidelity and the service quality, satisfaction, image and/or trust of users based on Setó (2003). Also, these block model has been used in Cavas- García et al. (2018).

Procedure
After arrangements were made with the managers of each of the golf courses, data collection was carried out between February and December 2015. The questionnaire was selfadministered, always in the presence of the interviewer. The objectives of the research work were explained to the participants, and they were instructed to complete all the responses to reduce experimental mortality and information regarding the confidentiality of the study. It was thought to be convenient to complete between 20 and 80 questionnaires in each course, according to their dimensions, and on different days and time slots to increase the sample representativeness, with an approximate duration per participant of between 5-10 minutes.

Data Analysis
The data analysis was carried out through the statistical package SPSS 20.0 for Windows. First, a descriptive analysis of the sample was carried out for the different variables grouped into three main dimensions: loyalty, price sensation and response. Subsequently, a bivariate analysis of these same variables was carried out with respect to the country of residence and sex of the respondents, using the Mann-Whitney U test. It ends with a two-stage cluster/conglomerate, to identify and classify participants in user groups with similar opinions on loyalty to the golf course.

Results
A total of 636 users of golf courses in Andalusia were interviewed. The analysis was done on 13 variables in three categories: 'loyalty' (intention to repurchase and recommend the golf course, V1-V5), 'price sensation' (V6-V9), and 'response' (V10-V13). Furthermore, aspects related to the sociodemographic profile, such as sex and place of residence, were also analysed for a better understanding of the variables.
Regarding the results of the 'loyalty' block, Table 1 shows that 47.16% of users agreed with the statement: I will tell other people about this golf course (V1); 31.95% 'totally agreed' and only 1.69% of users 'totally disagreed'. 42.64% agreed to recommend the golf course (V2) and 32.82% 'totally agreed', while a negative response was given by fewer than 10% of users. More than 70% of users agreed (37.48%) or 'totally agreed' (34.56%) to encourage family and friends to play on this golf course (V3). On the contrary, 4.45% totally disagree.
Regarding if they consider the golf course as the first option for any service they might need (V4), 35.74% agreed. Almost 50% was divided between fully agree (23.77%) and neither agree nor disagree (24.85%) and only 6.13% of users disagreed. Approximately two-thirds of the users believed that they would play more on the golf course in the following years (V5) (totally agree 32.62% and agree 34.46%). In reference to price sensation (V6-V9) and response (V10-V13), it is observed in Table 2 that less than 20% of users agree (9.24%) or totally agree (9.09%) that they would play less in the following years on the golf courses (V6). In this sense, a large percentage of users (38.10%) did not agree or disagree with the statement that they may play on another golf course that offers better service (V7). More than half of the users claim that although the prices are higher, they will continue playing in this course, (V8), as almost 50% say they would be willing to pay a higher price for playing on this golf course for the service received (V9).
For the response change to another golf course, if I have a problem with the service (V10), users did not show a strong agreement or disagreement. The highest percentage of responses was that 34.36% said they did not agree or disagree. The users showed a behaviour similar to the previous one (V12). The most chosen option for both statements was not to agree or disagree, with 34.66% and 29.38%, respectively. In V13, approximately 55% of users fully agreed (24.54%) or agreed (31.33%) that they would do so.

Discussion
Knowing the future intentions of user behaviour regarding sports organisations is vital because it influences their permanence and growth (Chen and Quester, 2006;Crosby and Johnson, 2008;Van Asperen et al., 2018).
This study of customer loyalty to golf courses seeks to identify low perceptions in the variables analysed in order to establish areas of improvement in service quality to improve loyalty and seek greater loyalty (Baena-Arroyo et al., 2016;García-Fernández, et al., 2017;Theodorakis et al., 2014).
In the age variable, it is observed that half of the golf players (50.94%) were aged between 50-69 years, the average age being 50.17 years; Similar values (50 years) have been recorded in the Murcia Region study (Cavas-García et al., 2018) or the Australian study of Crilley et al. (2002). But in this case, it accounted for 36% of the participants. In the Serrano study (2013) there is a slightly lower average age with 47.58 years and the study analysed people from the ages of 16 to 79 years; more than half (57.75%) was a range of age 41 and 60 years. Paniza (2005) said that the profile of the Andalusian golf player is between the ages of 41 and 50 but does not show an average numerical value that endorses it. There are other studies where the average age is very low compared to these studies. The average age of 16.14 years is recorded, and they analyse the performance of amateur golf players (Pinto and Vázquez, 2013).
Most of the participants (72.24%) resided in Spain, followed by a small percentage of the total residing in other countries such as Sweden (7.67%), Iceland (4.75%) and Denmark (3.22%). Regarding nationality, about 60% were Spanish participants (59.51%), followed by other nationalities such as the United Kingdom (11.81%) and Sweden (9.05%). In the study by Crilley et al. (2002) only 5% of users were born in English-speaking countries, and the study by Navarro-Vera and Ortuño-Padilla (2010) records that of the homeowners in a residential golf complex, 60% are foreigners, of which two-thirds come from the United Kingdom, and more than 20% come from Germany and the Netherlands.
With respect to the loyalty variables of the users according to their sex, only two variables stand out in which there were significant differences in the loyalty block and where a slightly higher assessment was shown in women (V3) and (V5) concerning encouraging family members to sign up for the course, as well as playing more in the course where they were; and with respect to the variable (V10) of the response block, the assessment by men was higher in terms of changing the course if there is any problem with the service. If the results are reviewed with the study by Serrano, Rial, García and Gambau (2011) there are differences between the sexes, but only relative to specific aspects of the management and adaptation of the golf service.
Most of the golf courses users were men (73.43%), compared to 26.42% of women.
Although the incorporation of women into the sport has been later, participation in golf were recorded as 58% men and 42% women (Hosteltur, 2012 Crilley et al. (2002) were 83% of male users. In courses other than golf, such as fitness García-Ferrando and Llopis, 2011;Molina et al., 2018) have a greater influx of women to these sports services.
It is relevant to know the global opinion that users have about the performance of the golf club, so 47.16% of users agreed with the statement of telling positive aspects to other people (V1), 31.95% totally agreed and only 1.69% of users strongly disagreed. The study by Cavas- García et al. (2018), given the same statement, 45.2% of users agree and 47.6% totally agree.
On the one hand, 42.64% agreed to recommend the course (V2) and 32.82% totally agreed, while a negative response was only given by less than 10% of users, while the percentages are higher in Cavas-Garcia et al. (2018) made in Murcia. On the other hand, these values are similar to those in the study by Paniza (2005), where 45% of the users of the Andalusian courses expressed positive opinions. In the study by Crilley et al. (2002), 68% of users recommend the course and 24% would strongly recommend it, in the present study carried out in Andalusia, higher values are recorded (32.82%).
More than 70% of users agreed (37.48%) or totally agreed (34.56%) in (V3) about encouraging the family to attend the golf course. Conversely, only 4.45% strongly disagreed. In the works of Hennessey, MacDonald and MacEachern (2008) and Hutchinson, Wang and Lai (2010), the overall satisfaction has a significant influence on word-of-mouth references and the intentions of using a service again.
Some of the users (17.63%) agreed that they would play in another golf course that offered better services (V7), and only 9.22% registered total agreement. Some studies indicate that the state of the golf course and facilities are the attributes that best explain user preferences (Hwang and Won, 2010;Won, Hwang, and Kleiber, 2009).
The loyalty category is the one that best expresses the intention to repurchase and recommend the service (Setó, 2003). In the work done in Murcia by Cavas- García et al. (2018), similar results were obtained to those found in this work, highlighting that the opinions in Murcia have been in all cases superior to the clients of the golf courses in Andalusia. Approximately two-thirds of the clients stated that in the next few years they would play more on the golf course (V5) where they were a member (67.08%), 'totally agree' (32.62%) and 'agree' (4.46%).
These terms are related to loyalty (Sanz andPonce de León, 2005, 2006), while Van Asperen et al. (2018) indicates that this loyalty is related to social networks.
The category of price sensation and being willing to pay more for the service offered (V9) in the course expressed 'totally agree' (6.75%) and 'agree' (14.11%), values slightly higher than the work from of Cavas- García et al. (2018) in Murcia. Serrano (2013), confirms that users are willing to pay more for better customer service in the human factor, considerations that are shared by other studies in other types of sports services (Bodet, 2006;Dorado, 2004;Rial, Valera, Rial, and Real, 2010). Regarding the dimension of response and change to another golf course in case of a problem (V10), they expressed 'totally agree' (15.80%) and 'agree' In general, and not only on golf courses, there must be a joint effort between manager and rest of the entity's employees (Ramos-Farroñán, Valdivia-Salazar, and Vidaurre-Sandoval, 2019; Rodríguez, 2016), they must plan actions to retain the client faithful (Valenzuela-Fernández, 2010), in the case of cluster 3 (V1-V3-V4-V8-V9) is formed by the clients that would remain on the golf course and represents a high percentage, 34.81% of the participants.

Conclusions and practical implications
The study presents a tool to predict future intentions of golf course users' behaviour, a simple scale that can be used by managers to measure customer loyalty to their golf course.
Other aspects to highlight about the opinion that customers show are: 1. A positive general opinion (V1-V2-V3) of the clients is observed on the golf courses they attend, highlighting in V1, that almost 50% agree (47.16%) to spread the good aspects from the countryside to friends and family.
2. Managers of the golf courses must pay special attention to variables (V2) and (V3), which are the ones with which the clients feel most identified and can guide the establishment of loyalty policies.
3. Given the claim that although the prices are higher, the client will continue playing on the golf course (V8), only 30.22% positioned themselves in the 'totally agree' and 'agree' responses. These values invite to the reflection since almost half (47.09%) of the users have positioned themselves in the affirmation of 'totally disagree' and 'disagree'.
4. Users who reside outside of Spain collect an assessment of the golf courses higher than those provided by residents in Spain (V8-V9) and obtain a better score in these variables related to loyalty. In the variable (V13) related to the variable block response, the clients residing in Spain show a higher assessment and indicate that if they had any problem with the service, they would complain to the director of the golf course.
5. The discriminatory variable most valued in the clusters was 'encourage family and friends to attend the club' (V3).
These results affirm that the study is a reliable and valid instrument for management because it provides very useful information about the future intentions of golf course clients, and the client base is one of the greatest assets of a golf course. In that way, this tool is very suitable for managers. It helps them identify the future intentions of the client and allows them to plan actions to hold those that are potentially included in the disloyal and first cluster group to leave the club. In conclusion, managers are advised that they must offer better service and adapt their offerings in order to build customer loyalty.