Ambush Marketing Is Dead, Long Live Ambush Marketing

Self Cite

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore attitudes towards ambush marketing at the 2016 Union of European Football Associations European Championships, seeking to examine fan affect towards ambush marketing. Design/methodology/approach A 24-item survey questionnaire was constructed, exploring consumers’ general cognition and affection of ambush marketing; following Dickson et al.’s (2015) design, industry-specific attitudes were canvassed, assessing supporters’ views of beer and gambling industry ambush marketers. Findings Results indicate that fans appear to be marginally more forgiving of ambush practices from beer or gambling brands than across ambushing more generally, yet a prevailing antipathy towards ambush marketing from an ethical perspective was observed. Importantly, however, the study’s findings suggest that industry-specific advertising regulations bear little impact on fan perspectives. Practical implications The study’s results bear notable implications for marketing theory and practice: for ambushing brands, this suggests that they are rather less likely to be have a disruptive effect on events and their official sponsors. For official sponsors, a level of threat from ambushers nevertheless remains as it would appear consumers do not have strong views about the practice of ambushing. Originality/value The study’s methods build upon and extend previous studies into consumer attitudes towards ambush marketing, specifically focusing on the perceptions and affect of fans in lieu of more empirically generalisable consumer populations. Given the target audiences of sponsors and ambush marketers, this emphasis on fan attitudes represents an important direction in ambush affect research.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Limitations and Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

European football supporter attitudes toward ambush marketing

Burton

Chadwick

2019

Self Cite

“…Importantly, however, this trend has equally extended to ambush marketers, whose efforts to parallel official sponsorship communications have increasingly been targeted towards online campaigns (Chanavat and Desbordes, 2014;McKelvey and Grady, 2017). Non-sponsors have sought to capitalize on the real-time activation opportunities and largely unrestricted communications space available to non-sponsors, driving associative marketing campaigns in an effort to exploit the commercial value of major sporting events (Burton and Chadwick, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring user sentiment towards sponsorship and ambush marketing

Burton

2019

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore consumer attitudes towards ambush marketing and official event sponsorship through the lens of sentiment analysis, and to examine social media users' ethical responses to digital event marketing campaigns during the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Design/methodology/approach The study employed a sentiment analysis, examining Twitter users’ utilization of sponsor and non-sponsor promotional hashtags. Statistical modelling programme R was used to access Twitter’s API, enabling the analysis and coding of user tweets pertaining to six marketing campaigns. The valence of each tweet – as well as the apparent user motivation underlying each post – was assessed, providing insight into Twitter users’ ethical impressions of sponsor and ambush marketer activities on social media and online engagement with social media marketing. Findings The study’s findings indicate that consumer attitudes towards ambush marketing may be significantly more positive than previously thought. Users’ attitudes towards ambush marketing appear significantly more positive than previously assumed, as users of social media emerged as highly responsive to creative and value-added non-sponsor campaigns. Originality/value The findings affirm that sentiment analysis may afford scholars and practitioners a viable means of assessing consumer attitudes towards social marketing activations, dependent upon campaign objectives and strategy. The study provides a new and invaluable context to consumer affect and ambush ethics research, advancing sponsorship and ambush marketing delivery and social sponsorship analytical practice.

“…With rising investments in sports sponsorship, interest in ambush marketing (AM) has grown. AM refers to “the incursive, obtrusive, or associative activities of a brand intended to yield a range of benefits similar or comparable to those typically achieved by brands that have a formal, contractual sponsorship agreement with an event” (Burton and Chadwick, 2018, p. 289). Since AM is an elusive subject to study, research has been scarce so far (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Burton and Chadwick, 2018; Meenaghan, 1998; Portlock and Rose, 2009; Séguin et al , 2005). The extant literature follows four different research streams regarding AM: understanding AM and establishing a common understanding of the term in the literature (Burton and Chadwick, 2018; Nufer, 2016; Payne, 1998); discussing the legal aspects and questions that arise from AM (James and Osborn, 2016; McKelvey and Longley, 2015; Meenaghan, 1994); analyzing consumers’ and the broad public’s perceptions and evaluations of the practice of AM including the ethical discourse accompanied (Burton and Chadwick, 2019; Burton et al , 2018; Dickson et al , 2015); and examining the effects of AM on consumers’ attitude toward the ambushing brand including the success of AM campaigns and the comparison of the effectiveness of sponsorship and AM (Dickson et al , 2018; Portlock and Rose, 2009; Schmidt et al , 2018; Wolfsteiner et al , 2015). Regarding the comparative marketing effectiveness of sponsorship and AM, literature on it is especially scant (Portlock and Rose, 2009; Schmidt et al , 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does ambushing pay off?

Ertz

Cordes²,

Buettgen

2019

Purpose Little is known about the comparative effectiveness of official sports event sponsorship, sports team sponsorship and ambush marketing (AM). The purpose of this paper is therefore to examine and compare the effectiveness of those three types of sports event-related marketing. Design/methodology/approach This research draws on a field experiment analyzing the effects the three types of sports event-related marketing during the FIFA Soccer World Cup 2014. To test the proposed main effects, the authors conducted a field experiment in two product categories (airlines and beer) testing for differences in brand attitude, customer-based brand equity and word-of-mouth (WOM), and testing moderating effects of advertisement creativity and sponsorship recognition. Findings Drawing on a field-experimental study on the occasion of the FIFA World Cup 2014, this research shows that team sponsorship has a stronger positive effect on consumers’ attitudes than AM and event sponsorship. Brand attitude emerges as a central mediator of the sponsorship effect on WOM and customer-based brand equity. The authors find, surprisingly, that sponsorship recognition does not significantly moderate the relationship between sponsorship and customer attitudes, whereas advertisement creativity even weakens the positive effect of sponsorship on brand attitude, WOM and customer-based brand equity. Research limitations/implications Consumers do not seem to form their brand attitude on the fact whether they recognize the particular brand as a sponsor or ambushing brand. This can be attributed to the theory of moralistic fallacy, which describes the phenomenon that makes individuals ignore the existence of something they perceive immoral, explaining the similar effectiveness of both. Originality/value This research contributes to the literature in several ways. First, it tests a causal model that examines brand attitude, customer-based brand equity and WOM -intentions as outcome variables of AM effectiveness. This goes far beyond the proxy-measure of “sponsorship awareness,” which previous studies used in order to quantify AM effectiveness. Second, taking into account and comparing the specific effects of event sponsorship, team sponsorship and AM, the study broadens the knowledge about the effectiveness of alternative sports event-related marketing approaches. Third, previous studies advised event sponsors to design humorous and creative advertisements to defend themselves against ambush marketers and beat them at their own game, which is tested by including ad creativity as a moderating variable.