Article Preview
Top1. Introduction
Private security encompasses a wide range of services, which may be legally provided by entities qualified to do so and which affect security guards with the specialty indicated for each of these types of services. As such, it is important to know the public perception of the users of the night-time entertainment spaces about the professionalism of the security guards as well as their satisfaction as customers.
Several events around the world have been widely reported, given truly complex situations involving bouncers-doormen, including several deaths, both of these professionals and of clients who frequent the clubs. Portugal was not and is not an exception. They have experienced situations that have had a real impact on public opinion, both because of the violence and the visibility they have achieved. It is therefore essential to understand this phenomenon of violence associated with the bouncers-doormen profession and to understand whether or not the media scaremongering that has been generated around them is validated by clients who frequent nightclubs. The perception of professionalism and client satisfaction with these professionals is all the more necessary to better frame this phenomenon.
Customers are the focus and will always be at the center of any organization. It is important to keep them satisfied. There are several surveys that present a very wide and heterogeneous range of benefits for companies by keeping their customers satisfied (Ibrahim, Abdallahamed, and Adam, 2018). The relevance of customers can never be underestimated and companies, as a whole and in a global and integrated way, have as their main goal to satisfy their current customers and attract new ones (Murali, Pugazhendhi and Muralidharan, 2016). It is therefore important that the whole company is committed to customer satisfaction, but not only. There are situations, as with this research, where other companies and their employees also contribute in an integrated way to the satisfaction of the final customer. The security guards, who provide security services in the night entertainment spaces, are usually employees of the private security company, but for the customer who attends the club are integrated in the club and there is no separation. As such, the bouncers-doormen are the first face and represent both their employer and the space where they work. It is then very clear that for both companies the success lies in the ability of security companies to attract the most suitable workers and to establish better working conditions for these professionals to perform their duties highly (Galli, 2020a).
Despite this importance, citizens' perception of the professionalism of private security guards and their satisfaction with their performance remains under-explored. Although there are many studies on public security, there is little research on the population's perception of private security. To our best knowledge there is no research on private security contexts. Moreira, Cardoso and Nalla (2015) alerts that future research should explore the perspectives of security guards in specific contexts, especially in nightlife places such as bars and clubs, where exists more controversy regarding these professionals. Accordingly, this study aims to explore the way nightlife clients evaluate the professionalism of the security guards and what is their level of satisfaction with their performance. The object of this research is the security staff, i.e. private security guards, with the specialty of bouncers-doormen, who provide security services in night entertainment spaces.
Nightlife has its own characteristics and specificities that affect and are affected by private security. At the end of 2017, two serious events, spent outside Lisbon's highly mediatized night-time entertainment places, placed the security of these venues in the spotlight of society. It was even claimed that they caused the change in the legal regime of the private security sector.
This work, within the immensity that is the nightlife and its private security, focuses only on the situation of the private security guards who regularly provide services in these places and the perception that clients and users of the places have about their professionalism and performance, as well as their degree of satisfaction.