Customer engagement marketing-defined as a firm's deliberate effort to motivate, empower, and measure customer contributions to marketing functions-marks a shift in marketing research and business practice. After defining and differentiating engagement marketing, the authors present a typology of its two primary forms and offer tenets that link specific strategic elements to customer outcomes and thereby firm performance, theorizing that the effectiveness of engagement marketing arises from the establishment of psychological ownership and self-transformation. The authors provide evidence in support of the derived tenets through case illustrations, as well as a quasi-experimental field test of the central tenet of engagement marketing.

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By integrating social identity theory with brand personality, the authors test a model of how perceptions of human brands affect consumer’s level of cognitive identification. The findings suggest that consumers view athletes as human brands with unique personalities. Additional findings demonstrate that athlete prestige and distinctiveness leads to the evaluation of athlete identification. Once consumers identified with the athlete, they were more likely to feel an emotional attachment to the athlete, identify with the athlete’s team, purchase team-related paraphernalia and increase their team-related viewership habits. The findings extend previous research on human brands and brand personalities in sports. Marketers can use the information gleaned from this study to better promote products that are closely associated with well-recognized and attractive athletes, thereby increasing consumer retail spending. In addition, the findings offer new insights to sports marketers seeking to increase team-related spectatorship by promoting the image of easily recognizable athletes.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between the brand personality of a sports team and the related consumer outcomes of identification and retail spending. Design/methodology/approach -A field study was conducted with games watched and retail spending as outcomes. Structural equation modeling was used to explore the relationships among constructs. Findings -The two brand personality dimensions of wholesomeness and successfulness are mediated through prestige to predict the consumer's identification with the team. The two brand personality dimensions of imaginativeness and toughness positively influence identification with the team while successfulness has a negative influence on identification with the team. Once a consumer identifies with the team quasi-brand, retail spending and viewership increase. Practical implications -Sports teams can utilise information gleaned from this study to better promote an attractive image, thereby increasing the number of games watched and retail spending. Originality/value -This paper presents an original twist on personality research by looking at the influence of the brand personality of an intangible sport brand on consumer identification and retail spending.

In two exploratory studies, a hierarchical model of personality was employed to investigate a number of possible trait antecedents and consumer-behavior -related consequences of superstition. One of the interesting findings was that the antecedents of superstition include a lower need for learning among older adults, higher levels of sports interest, a belief in fate, and a decreased belief in heaven and hell. In addition, the results suggested that the consequences of superstition might include beliefs in astrology, magic, psychokinesis, and the existence of fictitious creatures (e.g., the Loch Ness monster). Evidence suggesting a negative association between superstitious beliefs and attitudes concerning the genetic engineering of food products was also obtained. ᭧