The pivotal roles of product knowledge and corporate social responsibility in event sponsorship effectiveness

The authors apply consumer theories of cognition to event marketing specifically in relation to corporate sponsorships. Upon conducting field surveys with attendees (n = 1636) at an international sporting event with a multinational sponsor, the authors demonstrate the pivotal roles that 1) attendees' knowledge regarding the sponsor's product, and 2) perception of the sponsor's commitment to corporate social responsibility have on successful event sponsorship. Specifically, structural model results show how attendees' knowledge of the event sponsor's products and perceptions of the sponsor as socially responsible enhance attendees' commitment to the sponsor and intentions to purchase the sponsor's products. These results provide scholars and managers with means of improving event marketing communications.     

The effectiveness of advertising alcohol products in sports sponsorship

Studies have shown that exposure to sponsorship can influence behavior. However, evidence of the effectiveness of sports advertising and its influence on alcohol consumption is inconclusive. The goal of this research is to examine whether sponsorship by alcohol products receives the same attention as sponsorship by nonalcohol products depending on their congruence and the way they influence the intention to consume. Using sports posters, an experiment was performed to measure attention through eye-tracking. The results show that attention paid to alcohol brands is no greater than the attention paid to incongruent brands and is no different from the attention paid to congruent brands, regardless of gender and sporting discipline. Attention paid to sponsors has no influence on the intention to consume. These results show the need for further research on the effectiveness of sponsorship and its relationship with alcohol consumption.     

The impact of title event sponsorship announcements on shareholder wealth

Title sponsorships are often considered the crown jewels of sports sponsorship programs. Garnering top media coverage, title sponsorships are prized for both generating brand/product awareness and building image for their sponsors. Not surprisingly, the rising cost of title sponsorships has led some managers to question their underlying value. Accordingly, this study presents an analysis of the impact of 114 title sponsorship announcements of professional tennis and golf tournaments (both men’s and women’s), auto racing (NASCAR), and college bowl games on the stock prices of sponsoring firms. Overall, the results of the study suggest that title sponsorships are generally signed at market-clearing prices. Thus, companies undertaking title sponsorships typically receive exactly what they pay for—except in the case of NASCAR races (which show evidence of increases in share prices). Splitting the sample into new and renewing sponsorships generates results which differ dramatically by sport. Finally, a cross-sectional regression finds congruence of sport and sponsor, sponsorship by high tech firms and sponsorships by large firms all correlated with perceived sponsorship success.     

The effectiveness of advertising that leverages sponsorship and cause-related marketing

This paper shows that consumers are more likely to have ambivalent attitudes towards causerelated marketing (CRM) than sponsorship. Whereas consumers share similar positive perceptions of CRM and sponsorship, and attribute the motives behind them to altruism, their negative perceptions and attributions of CRM are more accessible than those of sponsorships. On the basis of these differences, this article proposes a contingency model in which suppressing the activation of CRM’s negative perceptions enhances the effectiveness of advertising that leverages CRM. The effectiveness of advertising that leverages corporate sponsorship, which is not associated with ambivalent perceptions, is less subject to the suppression of negative perceptions. The model includes two contingent factors, an individual difference factor and a situational factor. The results generally support the proposed model; the effectiveness of ads leveraging CRM improves when negative associations of CRM are less likely to be activated.     

后奥运时代赛事赞助如何价值最大化——运动品牌赛事赞助网誉案例分析

许多运动品牌的崛起都紧紧与运动赛事联系在一起,赛事赞助似乎成了运动品牌发展的必由之路。在08奥运这场体育营销的盛宴落幕之后,赛事赞助营销面临着新的挑战。     

Group service recovery strategies effectiveness: The moderating effects of group size and relational distance

The extant service recovery literature focuses on consumers' responses to individual failures. However, group service failures are in fact common, but they have received insufficient research attention. This study contributes to theory and practice by applying social impact theory to explain the social nature of group failures. Findings from two studies show that group size and relational distance substantially affect consumers' response to group service recovery strategies. Specifically, private economic recovery creates less consumer satisfaction as group size increases, whereas consumers with a distant social relationship are more satisfied with public recovery for both economic recovery and social recovery. However, consumers with close relationships are more satisfied with public economic recovery and private social recovery. Apart from offering practical insights, this study expands the theoretical understanding of service failures, suggesting that they occur in a complex social ecology instead of relatively simple dyadic interactions between service providers and consumers.     

Drivers of brand image improvement in sports-event sponsorship

This stock-taking article re-examines 20 years of research on conditions that influence the magnitude of brand image improvement through sports-event sponsorship. The study suggests a procedure to adequately measure sponsor image change in field sponsorships and investigates potential factors related to the sponsored property, the sponsorship relationship, the sponsor, and the individual sports spectator that may affect the magnitude of sponsor image improvement. An empirical analysis in the context of a large sponsored sports event shows that some drivers influence sponsor image improvement directly in a multiple regression analysis (spectators’ perceived event image, event–sponsor fit, sponsor familiarity, and product category importance), while other drivers are related to sponsor image in bivariate analyses only (spectators’ event interest, sport interest, event exposure, and demographic characteristics). Reasons for these findings (e.g., interrelationship between drivers of sponsor image improvement), managerial implications, and consequences for the development of a comprehensive model of sponsor image formation are discussed.     

The congruence effect between product emotional appeal and country-based emotion: The moderating role of country-of-origin

Previous research has suggested that country-based emotions (i.e., emotions associated with a country) can influence consumer evaluations of a product from that country. However, it remains unclear when and how country-based emotions can be influential in consumer decision making. The results from an experiment reveal that only for a destination with a less favorable country-of-origin image will the match (vs. mismatch) between the country-based emotion and the emotional appeal of the product advertisement increase the purchase likelihood of the product. These findings are beneficial for local brands in that they can promote tourist spending at their destination by cooperating with destination marketers in developing integrated promotional campaigns that elicit congruent emotions.     

奥运赞助商北京奥运会赞助营销效果实证研究

2008年北京奥运会带动了体育赞助营销在中国的迅速发展。奥运赞助对企业来说,是巨大的投入。奥运赞助的效果究竟如何,在现有的营销研究中鲜有涉及。本文介绍了笔者和益普索（Ipsos）公司的研究人员共同进行的企业奥运赞助营销实证研究。通过调查数据的采集和分析,我们发现,消费者并不能有效区分奥运赞助商和非奥运赞助商,但是奥运赞助有助于提高企业及其品牌的形象,增强消费者对其产品和服务的购买意愿。     

The role of sponsorship fit for changing brand affect: A latent growth modeling approach

Using a latent growth modeling (LGM) approach, this study examines the controversial role of perceived sponsor–event fit in inducing changes in brand affect. On the basis of two longitudinal studies related to the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the 2012 London Olympics, the authors determine that fit and brand affect increase linearly over time. Resolving an apparent conflict in the marketing literature, the results show that the initial level of fit relates positively to the initial level of brand affect, but relates negatively to the subsequent increase in brand affect. Moreover, a significant and positive association emerges between the change trajectories, such that a steeper increase in perceived fit results in a faster rate of brand affect improvement. Furthermore, the initial level of brand affect is associated with subsequent increases in neither brand affect nor fit. Therefore, incongruence resolution is key to ensuring that sponsorship improves brand affect. Finally, both attitude toward the sponsorship and event involvement have positive impacts on subsequent increases in both brand affect and perceived fit.     

Effects of comparative advertising format on consumer responses: The moderating effects of brand image and attribute relevance

In this research we distinguish between ads that compare two different brands (Across-Brand Comparison or ABC ads) and those that compare different versions of the same brand (Within-Brand Comparison or WBC ads). Results from an experiment indicate that when comparative ads use attributes that are relevant to product performance, ad type and brand image interact such that an ABC ad leads to less favorable consumer perceptions than a WBC ad when image of the sponsor brand is low but not when it is high. However, when the ads use attributes that are irrelevant to product performance an ABC ad leads to less favorable consumer outcomes than a WBC ad, regardless of the image of the sponsor brand. We further propose and show that ad believability mediates these effects. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed and directions for future research are provided.     

Expatriate personality and cultural fit: The moderating role of host country context on job satisfaction

This study draws on the cultural fit hypothesis to examine interactive effects of host country context and four (Multicultural Personality Questionnaire) expatriate personality traits – Cultural Empathy, Social Initiative, Emotional Stability, and Open Mindedness – on job satisfaction. The cultural fit hypothesis maintains that it is not only the expatriate personality traits per se, but the cultural fit between expatriate personality traits and host country cultural values, norms, and prototypical personality traits that predict expatriate adjustment in host countries (Searle & Ward, 1990). Providing partial support for the cultural fit hypothesis, data derived from 191 expatriates in Brazil and Japan shows that the importance of two personality traits varies in these countries. Specifically, expatriates with high Cultural Empathy were more satisfied with their jobs in Japan than in Brazil, whereas Social Initiative was more important for expatriates in Brazil.     

The fit of home to foreign market environment: An exploratory study of the relationship of congruence to performance

This research draws on the foreign market entry and organizational strategy literatures to address the relationship between home and foreign market environmental congruence and overseas venture performance. Theoretical arguments from prior studies have been juxtaposed in that transaction cost and diversification perspectives hypothesize different outcomes of firm entry into heterogeneous or homogeneous market environments. Using polynomial regression we test hypotheses regarding the home and overseas environmental congruence–venture performance relationship, and the organizational factors which act as moderators of this relationship. The results show that traditional transaction cost and market replication theories fail to fully explain the value of environmental fit when matching overseas market with domestic market profiles. Furthermore, the findings reveal that the moderating effects of organizational factors on the market congruence–venture performance relationship are also counter-intuitive to traditional perspectives. Managerial implications, study limitations, and directions for future research are offered.     

The moderating influence of brand image on consumers' adoption of QR-code e-wallets

In a post-pandemic era marked by thriving digital payments and e-commerce transactions due to physical distancing norms, the growth of mobile payments or E-wallets is expected to expand in tandem with the global trend toward cashless payment solutions. However, it is unclear whether this momentum would be sustained for over-the-counter (OTC) retail payments, particularly QR-code E-wallets, that are more affordable and accessible to merchants and customers than NFC-based (near field communication) systems in emerging markets. This study aims to model the interaction effects of brand image in shaping consumers’ E-wallet usage intentions. Incorporating a consumer-brand relationship element (i.e., brand image) should improve the understanding of consumers’ digital service experiences in proximity-based retail encounters. The research model was empirically tested using 305 responses from QR-based E-wallet users in the Klang Valley, Malaysia. Statistical analysis was performed using structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the hypotheses. An empirical examination of the model revealed effort expectancy, social influence, hedonic motivation, and perceived value as significant positive predictors of consumer usage intention. Furthermore, brand image was found to significantly strengthen the positive effect of perceived value and weaken the positive impact of hedonic motivation on the outcome. The study’s key contributions include reaffirming the crucial contingent role of brand image in consumer technology adoption studies and investigating consumer perceptions of QR-based E-wallets, which are expected to gain traction, especially in emerging markets. E-wallet providers should reinforce their value propositions by providing seamless, engaging, and easy-to-use experiences that improve users' brand perceptions.     

Increasing advertising effectiveness through incongruity-based tactics: The moderating role of consumer involvement

Developing effective advertising communication has been traditionally regarded as an increasing function of the fit between consumers' perceptions and the content of the transmitted messages. Given that, relevant research has given only limited attention to the consideration of incongruent and dissonant communication. Against this background, the present study explores how consumers react to brand information that is in conflict with established perceptions. The moderating role of consumer involvement in the decision process is also examined. Consistent with predictions, the results support a positive effect for moderately incongruent communication, which, however, is attenuated in high-involvement decisions. The theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.     

When comparative valence frame affects brand extension evaluations: the moderating role of parent-extension fit

This research examines how comparative valence frame influences brand extension acceptance when parent-extension fit matters. The results of this research show that a positive comparison-framed ad message elicits more favourable extension evaluations and greater purchase intentions than a negative comparison-framed ad message under the similar extension condition, while both positive and negative comparison-framed ad messages contribute equally to brand extension evaluations and purchase intentions under the dissimilar extension condition. The findings also suggest that perceived extension risk serves as a critical mediator that underlies the interactive impact of comparative valence frame and parent-extension fit on brand extension evaluations. Theoretical and practical implications for advertising message strategies in brand extensions are discussed.     

Founding scale and survival: double-edged effects of corporate sponsorship

This study examines the effects of founding scale on survival rates across independent and corporate-sponsored Taiwan securities firms. Empirical results confirm the positive effects of founding scale and corporate sponsorship on new venture survival. Results also indicate that when founding scale is large, corporate-sponsored new ventures have higher survival rates than independent ventures. However, when founding scale is smaller, the reverse is true: corporate-sponsored new ventures have lower survival rates than independent ventures. Therefore, corporate sponsorship comes off as a double-edged sword; new ventures may benefit from the parent's existent resources and social linkages, but also suffer from a loss of autonomy and control over major decisions.