Understanding Golf Country Club Members’ Loyalty: Factors Affecting Membership Renewal Decisions

Many private country clubs across the United States have experienced a declining or flat membership and smaller waitlists of members wanting to join. The objective of this study was to investigate whether member involvement, service quality, and perceived value, influence member satisfaction and intention to renew membership for members of private country clubs. An online survey instrument customized for the country club industry was distributed to members of two country clubs in northeast Ohio. Results indicate that involvement level of members and perceived value impact country club members’ satisfaction and intention to renew their membership. Managerial implications are discussed.

The Beacon, February 21, 2011

Vol. 22, Issue 17, 8 pages

Modeling of a Heat-Induced Buckling of Plates Using the Mesh-free Method

In the process of engineering design of structural shapes, the flat plate analysis results can be generalized to predict behaviors of complete structural shapes. In this case, the purpose of this project is to analyze a thin flat plate under conductive heat transfer and to simulate the temperature distribution, thermal stresses, total displacements, and buckling deformations. The current approach in these cases has been using the Finite Element Method (FEM), whose basis is the construction of a conforming mesh. In contrast, this project uses the mesh-free Scan Solve Method. This method eliminates the meshing limitation using a non-conforming mesh. I implemented this modeling process developing numerical algorithms and software tools to model thermally induced buckling. In addition, convergence analysis was achieved, and the results were compared with FEM. In conclusion, the results demonstrate that the method gives similar solutions to FEM in quality, but it is computationally less time consuming.