The influence of sport sponsorship on brand equity and purchase behavior

Abstract

Drawing on Aaker’s brand equity model and Keller’s brand engagement concept and building on the sponsorship between a professional basketball club and a software company, this study examined how sport sponsorship affects brand equity and purchase behavior of the sponsor’s product. Data from 222 survey respondents were collected and analyzed using structural equation modeling techniques. The results provided evidence that perceived quality and brand engagement impact brand loyalty and purchase behavior of fans toward the sponsor’s product. Perceived fit between sponsor and sponsee and team identification were found to influence significantly sponsor’s brand equity constructs. The study extends Aaker’s model in the sport sponsorship context and highlights the influential role of perceived quality and brand engagement on driving sport team fans to form brand loyalty and purchase sponsor’s product.     

Using evaluative conditioning to explain corporate co-branding in the context of sport sponsorship

This paper investigates the mechanism under which attitude formation takes place in corporate co-branding in the context of sport sponsorship. We developed a conceptual model that synthesises three theoretical frameworks (evaluative conditioning, relationship marketing and brand equity), aiming to explain corporate co-branding in the context of sport sponsorship. Specifically, the proposed model posits that, in sport sponsorship, close consumer relationships with a sport brand leverage sponsor brand equity elements (brand familiarity, brand personality and brand image) and can lead to positive outcomes (wordof-mouth communications). We tested the proposed model using data collected from fans of two professional soccer teams (N = 280). The results of the study confirmed the proposed relationships and further provided new insights regarding the role of brand equity elements in creating ‘backward’ effects to the sport brand (team). Moreover, the findings suggest that sport sponsorship might be the ideal context for co-branding partnerships between mature/high-equity brands.     

When ambush marketing is beneficial to sponsorship awareness: creating sponsor distinctiveness using exclusivity and brand juxtaposition

ABSTRACT

Ambush marketing is a contentious practice whereby brands communicate an association with an event without being an official sponsor. Those involved in sponsorship commonly try to limit it by restricting ambusher activity in event contexts. We introduce theoretical ideas around distinctiveness to explain that sponsors may actually fare better in terms of awareness outcomes when ambushers are present in the event context, if they strategically use ambusher presence to highlight their own distinctive sponsor status. Across two experiments we show that sponsor distinctiveness can be achieved by communicating sponsorship exclusivity in ambusher presence, and by facilitating juxtaposition of sponsor and ambusher messages. Results include increased recall to sponsor cues, and reduced recall to ambusher cues. The findings suggest ambusher restrictions may sometimes be counter-productive.     

Are rival team fans a curse for home team sponsors? The moderating effects of fit,oppositional loyalty,and league sponsoring

Sports sponsorship is big business, and a great deal of research provides evidence as to sponsorship’s efficacy in achieving a large range of communication goals, particularly for brands that are perceived as fitting well with the sport by the most involved fans. A developing body of literature, however, suggests that fan passion for a favorite team or athlete might work against the sponsors of hated rivals. The current research contributes to the rivalry effects topic by examining the impact of sponsor-sport fit, business rivalry, and league sponsoring on “home” team fan attitudes towards the sponsors of their team’s main rival. The study finds that negative rivalry effects are particularly severe when the rival team sponsor has high-perceived fit with the sport and is a direct business rival to a “home” team sponsor, but that league sponsorships largely mitigate these rivalry effects.     

Buying a sponsor's brand: the role of affective commitment to the sponsored team

Sponsorship is increasingly important in a firm's communication mix. Research to date has focused on the impact of sponsorship on brand awareness and its subsequent consequences for image congruency and consumer attitudes towards sponsors' brands. A lesser studied area is the effect of sponsorship on consumers' purchase intentions and behaviours. We argue that existing models of sponsorship driven purchase behaviour fail to account for affective commitment, which mediates relationship between affiliation with the team and social identification with the team. We propose a modified framework describing the effect of sponsorship on purchase intentions in the context of low and high performing sports teams. The framework is tested using structural equations modelling; employing PLS estimation and data collected via online survey of AFL chat room participants. Results confirm the role of affective commitment in sport sponsorship purchase intentions and indicate that team success has a significant influence on fans' purchase behaviours.     

Investigating the Influence of a Joint Sponsorship of Rival Teams on Supporter Attitudes and Brand Preferences

The sponsorship of football is a multi‐million pound industry. Sponsors hope that supporters' enthusiasm for their team will translate into long‐term benefits for the sponsor. However, the intensity of team rivalry means that a sponsorship may also alienate opposing supporters. The rival Glasgow clubs, Celtic and Rangers, therefore undertook a joint sponsorship arrangement with the communications company NTL. This paper investigates how the benefits obtained compared to those that may have been expected from a single sponsorship. While the sponsorship was very effective in creating awareness for NTL, ambivalent attitudes were found towards the company. The most committed supporters were the least accepting of the sponsorship and the expected positive relationship between support for the club and brand preference for NTL was not found.     

Rivalries and sponsor affiliation: Examining the effects of social identity and argument strength on responses to sponsorship-related advertising messages

This study examines how social identities and message characteristics influence the processing of sponsorship associations and persuasive messages. Using an experimental approach we found that sponsor affiliation with a rival team results in a negative response by highly identified fans, even when message characteristics include strong, favorable arguments. Conversely, less identified fans formed evaluations based on message characteristics, such that strong arguments were evaluated more favorably than weak arguments, independent of sponsorship affiliation. Overall, the study confirmed that strong social identities influence information processing in ways that are favorable for in-group associations and unfavorable for out-group associations. The implications for both consumers and marketing communications practitioners are discussed.     

The simultaneous sponsorship of rival teams: Beyond ingroup favoritism and outgroup animosity

The current research broadens the scope of sponsorship research to empirically examine ambivalence as a consumer response to the increasingly popular strategy of brands engaging in the simultaneous sponsorship of rival teams (i.e., a joint sponsorship). Specifically, our research considers the effects of ambivalence and team identification on sponsorship responses across three different types of brand-team partnerships: a joint sponsorship of two rival teams, a favored team sponsorship, and a rival team sponsorship. Our results indicate that a joint sponsorship elicits ambivalence which directly and indirectly has a negative impact on attitudes and intentions toward the sponsoring brand. Joint sponsorships were also found to diminish the well-established link between team identification and attitudes and intentions. Our research also identified argument strength as a brand messaging strategy for mitigating some of the negative effects of simultaneously sponsoring rival properties.     

Determinants of Consumers’ Attitudes Toward a Sport Sponsorship: A Tale from College Athletics

Although sponsorship is considered one of the most important revenue sources, there have been surprisingly few attempts to explain how sponsorship works in the mind of a consumer in the nonprofit business segment. The purpose of this study was to identify factors that determine consumers’ attitudes toward sponsorship in college athletics. A conceptual model includes factors related to the sports property/event/team and sponsors. This study also examined the role of a perceived congruence between the sponsor and the sponsored property. A structural equation model test using a convenience sample of 460 students enrolled in a division I-A university suggested that specific characteristics of both the sponsor and the sponsored event are significant determinants of attitudes toward a college athletic sponsorship, and the perceived congruence plays an important part as moderator of a sponsorship perception–attitude link.     

Comments

Despite the increased usage of sponsorship activities by practitioners, there has been little research on the impact of sponsorship on building brand image. This research examines the influence of sponsorship on associations transfer from sponsored entity to the sponsor. In order to test all the hypotheses, two pre-tests and one main study were conducted. Empirical findings suggest that individuals who are exposed to the highly fitting partnership develop a stronger associative link between sponsor and sponsored entity than individuals who are exposed to the poorly fitting partnership. Results do not offer support that frequency of the partnership contributes to building the strength of the associative link between sponsor and sponsored entity. Most importantly, results indicate that the strength of the associative link between sponsor and sponsored entity is positively related to the transfer of associations from sponsored entity to sponsor.     

Understanding Consumer Response to Sponsorship Information: A Resource‐Matching Approach

Sponsorship of sporting teams and events has become an increasingly popular form of corporate and brand communication. Despite the continued growth of sponsorship spending, the corresponding literature base is highly fragmented and little agreement exists related to the psychological mechanisms underlying response. This paper integrates several prominent sponsorship research streams in promoting a “resource‐matching” perspective of cognitive elaboration and attitude change. This research holds that in the absence of clear functional fit between sponsor and event, identifying a basis for sponsor–event fit is likely to require some degree of cognitive effort. The results indicate stronger social identification with the sponsored event influences the favorability they attribute to sponsor motives and promotes stronger perceptions of fit between the sponsor and the sponsored activity. Further, the results indicate fit perceptions mediate the relationship between attribution and sponsorship response. Consistent with ELM theory, when cognitive resources are insufficient for the complexity of the fit‐matching task, social identification may still act as a peripheral cue in driving a positive affective response to sponsorship information.     

The impact of pre-commercial break announcements on audience identification of official Olympic sponsors: a case study

Research has demonstrated the importance of media context as a situational factor in advertising effectiveness. This preliminary study investigated the impact of a previously overlooked television context factor, the pre-commercial break announcement, during televised coverage of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games in the USA. Broadcast advertising is not part of the official Olympic sponsorship package and advertisers must negotiate television schedules in addition to sponsor fees. During the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, the official US television network, NBC, included numerous pre-commercial break mentions spotlighting official sponsors as well as other advertisers who purchased commercial time during the event. This study investigated the impact of pre-break announcements on viewers' ability for distinguishing between official sponsors and regular programme advertisers. It was determined that these announcements do influence recall and increase the likelihood that any advertiser will be identified as a sponsor, thus compromising the value of an Olympic sponsorship.     

Sponsorship effects on brand image: The role of exposure and activity involvement

Sponsorships capture a significant proportion of marketing budgets. In firm evaluations of the effectiveness of sponsorship engagements, image improvements represent the most important company objective. This study develops and tests a framework for explaining how exposure and activity involvement moderate the effects of event image, event–sponsor fit, and event commercialization on sponsor image. Using empirical data collected at a large sporting event with multiple sponsors, the authors show that increased sponsorship exposure reduces sponsor image if respondents perceive a low fit between the event and sponsor or high levels of event commercialization. Involvement in the sponsored activity improves the sponsor's image, in that the effect of event commercialization is positive for highly involved persons. This paper concludes with some reasons for the findings, implications for the choice and design of sponsorships, and further areas for research.     

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.     

Emergent Leadership in Self-Managed Virtual Teams

The issue of leadership in virtual teams is an increasingly important one for many modern organizations, because these teams – typically project-based with a finite lifespan and specific deliverables – are frequently self-managed, having no designated leader within the team (Yukl 1998). While such teams may have increased flexibility in setting goals and achieving them, the virtual context may hinder team members' abilities to coordinate activities and influence others (Manz and Sims 1993). Longitudinal data were collected over the course of a semester from virtual teams, comprised of students from three North American universities. Our results suggest that high performing self-managed virtual teams displayed significantly more leadership behaviors over time compared to their low performing counterparts. Specifically, these teams displayed significantly more concentrated leadership behavior focused on performance (i.e. “Producer” behavior) and shared leadership behavior focused on keeping track of group work (i.e. “Monitor” behavior) than the lower performing teams. Interestingly, these behaviors emerged strongly during the first half of the groups' lifespan, and stayed throughout the life of the groups, but steadily dissipated in strength over time.     

Memory Effects of Different Relational Links between Brands and Sponsored Events

Sport sponsorship is an important marketing communication tool, and stakes in sponsorship deals are high. Therefore, sponsors strive to ensure that their investments are effective and protected from competitors—that is, ambusher marketers’ attacks. Still, little is known about how ambush marketing affects sponsor identification and misidentification of ambushers as sponsors. This study investigates levels of sponsor and ambusher identification in three experimental settings, controlling for the presence/absence of an ambusher, communication modality, and response formats. A field study in the context of a large sports event demonstrates the external validity of the findings. The results provide evidence of a nondestructive interference of ambush marketing, indicating that ambush marketing does not necessarily harm sponsor identification. Misidentification of nonsponsors as sponsors occurs because of the indirect link established between the event and the company through ambush marketing, but not as a consequence of other communication activities by a competitor with no link to the event. Finally, a combined sponsor–ambusher perspective indicates that sponsors do not necessarily have a consistent “official sponsor” advantage over ambushers. Findings are discussed with emphasis on implications for sponsors, ambushers, and marketing researchers.     

There goes my hero again: sport scandal frequency and social identity driven response*

Abstract

With sport scandals reported frequently in the media, it is important to understand how associated stakeholders are affected. In the current work, we investigated the impact of off-field sport scandal on key stakeholders (the sport, implicated team, sponsor brand), and the roles played by team identification and scandal frequency. A 2 (fandom) × 3 (scandal frequency) between-subjects quasi-experiment examined responses to scandal news stories. Ingroup fan attitudes became less favorable toward all stakeholders following scandal, especially when it was described as repeat behavior. This differed to outgroup fan attitudes, which became less favorable toward the sport, but were generally negative and stable for other stakeholders, irrespective of scandal frequency. Respondents were willing to attribute responsibility to particular perpetrators rather than the team, and tended to endorse sponsorship continuation simultaneously with perpetrator removal/sanction. Findings have strategic implications for those involved in sponsorship, sport marketing, and sport management.     

The effectiveness of image congruence and the moderating effects of sponsor motive and cheering event fit in sponsorship

Using the case study data of the South Korea 2002 and 2006 World Cup sponsorship campaigns, this study examined (1) whether more favourable sponsorship response occurs as image congruence between a sponsor and the World Cup increases, and whether (2)consumer attributions of a sponsor’s motives in sponsoring the World Cup and (3) a sponsor’s perceived fit in aiding World Cup cheering events, namely cheering event fit, moderate image congruence’s effects on sponsorship response. Consistent with prior research, results suggest that high vs low image congruence sponsorships generate more favourable responses to the sponsorship, as measured by attitudes and intentions at three different levels of the hierarchy of effects. Results also show that high cheering event fit leads to more favourable sponsorship response. Furthermore, a negative interaction between image congruence and cheering event fit indicates that, albeit still significant and positive, the effect of image congruence on sponsorship response becomes significantly weaker at higher levels of cheering event fit than at lower levels of cheering event fit. A moderating role of a sponsor’s sponsoring motive has not been supported. Overall, the finding sunder score the significance of image congruence as well as the utility of cheering event fit as a particular type of ‘created fit’ that can be used to reduce the perception of low fit and its associated risks.     

The Vigor of a Disregarded Ally in Sponsorship: Brand Image Transfer Effects Arising from a Cosponsor

Typically, brands vie for image transfer from an event or other property when entering a sponsorship engagement. Yet, this practice leaves a valuable part of a sponsorship alliance unexploited. This study addresses a new opportunity for brand collaboration that may arise from the vigor of a disregarded ally. Specifically, the authors infer from congruity theory and associative learning theory to propose a research model that advocates the idea of a sponsor to also gain from brand attitude and personality traits innately tied to a cosponsor paired with the same event. Structural equation and, respectively, path model testing provide evidence for direct transfer of attitudes as well as for carryover of personality traits between two sponsor brands. These transfer effects turn out to be moderated by perceived fit between the sponsor brands’ images and by familiarity with the target sponsor brand. Brand managers may want to bring these findings to bear in sponsorship policy design and execution by purposefully choosing with whom they share a perimeter billboard or any other sponsorship signage. Such a deliberate approach stands in contrast to current sponsorship practice where agents tend to disregard linked cosponsors and, instead, fortuitously yield up to their fate.     

Effects of Strategic Exiting from Sponsorship after Negative Event Publicity

Research on the effects of event sponsorship has focused mainly on the consequences for brand equity of the association between a sponsor and a sponsored event. However, the effects of management's decision to exit from a sponsorship have received little empirical consideration. The studies reported here were carried out to fill this gap by systematically examining (a) the impact of a sponsor's corporate reputation on consumer responses to the strategic exit from a controversial sponsorship, and (b) the role that perceived trust in the decision plays in determining the outcomes. The results of two studies emphasize that strategic exiting from a controversial sponsorship (i.e., possible doping scandals at the event) can have positive consequences for the sponsor's image when the decision is trusted, but detrimental consequences when the exiting is attributed to overly self‐serving reasons. Trust in sponsorship withdrawal is elicited when the sponsor is perceived as having a good character with respect to meeting societal obligations, or when communication efforts are made salient that create trust in the withdrawal decision by a firm with a bad character.