Fitness Industry: the Ratio of Promotional Offers and Real Practices

In the modern sociocultural space, trends on human physicality begin to shift. Nowadays, fitness is not only a way to get in shape or improve health, it has already become a part of a lifestyle and a leisure time of modern people. Thanks to the new media, advertising of the fitness industry is more effective than ever, as it reaches the potential consumer many times faster then before. This graduation study is devoted to the influence of body images used in fitness clubs’ advertising on the behavior of their clients. The purpose of the present study is to identify the relationship between images used in advertising and the actual results got by clients of fitness clubs in improving of their physicality. To conduct the research we used the expert interviews and analyzed the data, obtained in quantitative online survey, which was attended by relevant audience of 359 people. It was determined that the fitness club clients’ media literacy is still at a rather low level, as the present models of the fitness advertising are still effective, however there is a trend of growing media literacy in this field. People still believe in the possibility of achieving the same body, which they see on the advertising images presented by fitness clubs, but today their focus shifted from shaping of their bodies to the improving of ones health and getting leasure from the training classes.