phenomenological analysis of sports club customers’ gratitude

The aim of this study was to analyze the phenomenology of sports club customers’ gratitude. the method of this research is qualitative and its approach is hermeneutic phenomenology. the participants of this research were 14 customers of sports clubs who had experienced gratitude. these people were selected, using purposeful sampling based on theoretical saturation. semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. in this study, the strategies of credibility, transferability, conformability, process audit study, and inter-coder agreement were employed to assess the reliability and trustworthiness of the results. the data was analyzed using van manen’s (2016) phenomenological method in three stages of coding. based on the holistic and selective analysis, 6 main themes with 14 sub-themes emerged from the combination of 53 sub-themes. it was also found that the behavioral performance of employees, organizational factors, and individual factors are the drivers of customer appreciation, sports club customer appreciation has two behavioral and emotional aspects, and grateful customers show favorable psychological and behavioral reactions. therefore, it can be pointed out that customer appreciation is the result of an involuntary exchange process that is accompanied by favorable psychological and behavioral reactions. in addition, any increase in customer appreciation depends on the customer’s self-evaluation, the behavioral performance of employees and organizational factors.