Crunch Case Study

                                                                                                          Diego MarVel  

                                                                                                     E01548818

                                                                                                                             October 20th, 2015

Emerson College

Marketing Communication Department

Global Marketing Communication & Advertising

CASE WRITING:  CRUNCH

    Crunch is a fitness center founded in 1989 by Doug Levine in New York City. He started with the idea of creating an aerobic studio, as it was a popular activity practiced by that time. However, Manhattan was already flooded with these kind of studios, so due to his acting background, Levine asked his aerobic instructors to develop unique routines in order to make aerobics a “theatrical experience” making Crunch to differentiate from the existing studios.  The 80’s ended and so did the interest for aerobics; however, fitness remained an important part of people’s lives. Crunch started growing but the lack of male customers and the change in people’s interests made Levine to change his business model, so he bought weights and cardiovascular equipment in order to enter to the gym business. By that time, the market was dominated by two types of operations, the first ones were the gyms emphasized in body- building for people who wanted to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger and the second ones seeking for specific “Ken and Barbie” stereotypes. However, Levine realized there were health-conscious people specially urban centers on their twenties who wanted to exercise in order to stay fitness, lose weight, have fun and improve their state of mind, but didn’t feel comfortable exercising in the existent gyms as they felt social pressure to fit into certain stereotypes. It was then when Crunch set apart from existing gyms by its –no judgment– philosophy, where these people could exercise with no glares of disapproval at a reasonable price. Moreover, Levine hired experienced trainers in order to develop innovative unique routines and started offering one-year memberships. Crunch Fitness invented classes such

as Hip-Hop Aerobics and Co-Ed Wrestling that fuse fit and fun in unexpected ways. In addition, Crunch started offering shorter group fitness classes (30 or 45 minutes versus the traditional hour-long format) to appeal to time-crunched consumers. These unique classes appeal to about half of consumers.

Crunch managed very well to fulfill consumer’s needs and expectations and created a strong image by using several advertisement methods like printing their logo on apparel or making events as well as TV commercials and fitness programs on TV. By 1999 they owned facilities in 4 cities in the United States and in Tokyo, Japan and were looking forward to a greater expansion.