Over the past two decades, relationship marketing efforts have assumed a prominent role in sports organization marketing. A sports organization that successfully implements relationship marketing programmes is able to develop long-term relationships with its fans, thus increasing the likelihood of customer retention. This study examines customer retention in sports organization marketing by considering the impact of team identification and satisfaction with team performance on four fan consumption behaviours: in-person attendance, media-based attendance, purchase of team merchandise and word-of-mouth communication related to the team. Survey data were collected from 300 fans of more than 40 professional and collegiate teams involved in seven sports. Results suggest that both team identification and satisfaction with team performance impact multiple consumption behaviours, as represented by fans' intentions to engage in future consumption. Team identification was found to have the greater impact on consumption behaviours, suggesting that a sports organization's continuing efforts to bond with its fans may provide greater benefits than efforts to improve the team's competitive performance.

This research extends overlapping streams of research examining asymmetric information, adverse selection, and buyer trust by presenting an empirical investigation of the process by which a market for “lemons” emerges in the claiming market for thoroughbred racehorses. The study focuses attention on the potential of quality signals and buyer trust to lessen the impact of adverse selection. Incorporating concepts from economics, marketing, and psychology, a conceptual model suggests that adversely selected racehorses, distinguished by an unintentional signal from sellers to potential buyers, will be priced lower than otherwise similar racehorses perceived to be less subject to adverse selection. Data from one day of claiming races at 16 American racetracks (744 racehorses) are used to test this study hypothesis. Results provide evidence for adverse selection and a mitigating quality signal in the thoroughbred claiming market. Implications for buyers and sellers in this market, as well as more general implications, are discussed and an avenue for future research is proposed.

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For years, transportation outsourcing was considered a formal transaction-cost economics decision with little or no consideration for additional factors. This limiting perspective provides the stimulus for the current qualitative study, which examines additional factors affecting the transportation decision. For this article, the equine industry is studied in order to gain a better understanding of additional factors that go into decision- making. In-depth interviews with horse owners and trainers in the equine industry revealed that, in addition to a detailed cognitive assessment of transporter capabilities, the outsourcing decision involves a considerable emotional component. These finding could be noteworthy for a number of industries, such as household goods, museums, fine art (paintings, statues, sculptures), antique furniture (including pianos), collectibles of all kinds, and other high involvement luxury items.

Research into compensation management continues to draw attention from scholars in many organizational disciplines ranging from accounting and finance to human resources and strategic management. Scholars search for empirical links between various compensation strategies and improved performance. A prime example is the institutionalization of executive compensation contracts that theoretically, at least, should reward executives on the basis of their firms' financial performance. Yet scholars are finding inconsistent evidence of any links. The authors suggest that an ethnostatistical analysis of these studies will yield one consistent finding: obsession with the value of rational data as the "truth" about organizational practices. This reliance on quantitative measures has become an organizational fetish. In this article, the authors explain how compensation strategies have become fetishes and then use semiotics and ethnostatistics to explore the fetish nature of compensation contracts that award annual salaries and bonuses based on various price and earnings measures of organizational performance.