This study examined theoretical relationships between key variables of sponsorship effectiveness that include sponsor awareness, corporate image and future purchase intention. Involvement in the sport of soccer was also examined as a key consumer variable. Results suggested that favourable purchase intentions were more likely to occur when consumers held a positive image of the sponsoring companies and had a high level of sports involvement; and that consumers' sports involvement positively influenced sponsor awareness, corporate image and purchase intention.

This study empirically tested the Sport Website Acceptance Model (SWAM), proposed by Hur, Ko and Claussen (2007). The SWAM added Perceived Enjoyment (Davis et al, 1992) and Perceived Trustworthiness (Belanger et al, 2002) to the two factors Perceived Ease of Use and Perceived Usefulness used in the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis, 1989). This study proposes a competing model to the original SWAM and compares this by incorporating two additional constructs, Sport Involvement (Shank & Beasley, 1998) and Psychological Commitment to a Team (Mahony et al, 2000). Structural equation modeling analyses revealed acceptable model fits, both in the original SWAM and in the competing model. Subsequent analyses led the authors to conclude that the competing model was the better version of the SWAM.

The purpose of this study is to develop a Sport Website Acceptance Model (SWAM) based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM; Davis, 1989). To better explain sports fans' decision-making processes in using sports websites, we incorporated salient consumer variables as sports involvement and psychological commitment and added trustworthiness and enjoyment to the TAM. The paper concludes with implications for future research and for application to online sports business.

This research investigates whether conditioning (the systematic pairing of celebrity endorsers with sporting events) produces positive attitudes towards sporting events. It also investigates whether using celebrities who are highly congruent with a sporting event leads to a stronger conditioning effect. The results demonstrate that individuals exposed to the systematic pairing of a sporting event with a celebrity did develop a more favourable attitude towards the event than individuals in the control condition. Moreover, the pairing of a celebrity with a sporting event was more effective in forming a positive attitude towards the sporting event when congruence was high.

Research addressing women’s portrayals in sport-products advertising has focused on typical mass media, largely ignoring point-of-purchase advertising. Yet, point-of-purchase ads have the potential to be more powerfully reinforced which adds urgency to the need to examine such messages. The purpose of this study was to describe gender characteristics in, and consumers’ reactions to, sports product point-of-purchase ads (f=161) at 24 stores in nine geographic regions and to assess consumers’ (N=351) feelings of involvement in the ads. Based upon the results both female and male consumers perceived the ads with various levels of relevance and meaning and each gender preferred ads that related directly to themselves and their needs. Such results have direct implications for manufacturers/marketers of sports-related products because (a) women shopped for, and purchased, sports-related products more frequently than men, and (b) consumers noticed and were able to identify/recall activities featured in sports-related advertising. Therefore, manufacturers’ wishing to amass and maintain the women’s market need to target women directly and feature women performing meaningful activities in their advertising.