Willingness to pay, user experience and customer engagement as the foundation of successful strategic management: Example of a training program

Gone are the days when the function of marketing activities was reduced to how to sell as much as possible. Today, the focus of marketing is a satisfied and loyal consumer. On the other hand, dynamism in the environment imposes the need for continuous research of consumer behavior in order to understand their needs and desires, and to a certain extent predict the decisions they make when choosing and purchasing products/services. Modern concepts such as willingness to pay, user experience and customer engagement are used to analyze consumer behavior, especially in terms of choosing and purchasing products/services, the price they are willing to pay and the factors that influence their choice. The authors of the paper assume that the consumer's willingness to pay a certain price for the product, repeat the purchase, remain loyal to the brand and recommend it to potential customers, is conditioned by his user experience. Also, the authors start from the assumption that in addition to the fact that a satisfied consumer is ready to pay a certain price for a product or service, he is also ready to get involved, share his experience with others, participate in the development of products or services and recommend them to others. The primary goal of the work is the analysis of consumers' willingness to pay for exercise programs and allocate time for traveling to the sports facility and through the same calculation of the acceptable price of the exercise program, as well as the range in which it moves, i.e. the lower and upper price limits, then determining the optimal or ideal program prices, as well as indifference points. For the purposes of this paper, a survey was conducted using a questionnaire containing 26 questions. 308 respondents participated in the research. The data obtained through empirical research were processed using the Van-Westendorp method, descriptive statistics, cross-tabulation and the Pearson correlation coefficient. The IBM SPSS Statistics-version 26. The results of the conducted research show that the consumers who participated in the research are ready to allocate money to pay for the exercise program and spend a certain amount of time traveling to the sports facility, while the price they are ready to accept ranges between the lower and upper limits (from 1,200 to 2,700 dinars), and the most common price of the exercise program is 2,000 dinars. The research also found that user experience and customer engagement influence respondents' willingness to pay a higher price for an exercise program.