An associative learning account of branding effects of sponsorship

Abstract

For sponsors, the essence of commercial sponsorship is the right of being associated with the sponsored organisation, which can later be leveraged for branding purposes. The branding power of sponsorship relies on its associative power, and consumers learn sponsorship in two qualitatively distinctive ways: evaluative conditioning and predictive learning. These two processes can lead to different branding outcomes (e.g., a decrease in brand loyalty, but an increase in perceived quality). This study stresses the limitations of traditional theoretical accounts in explaining branding effects of sponsorship and proposes that associative learning would be the fundamental branding mechanism of sponsorship marketing. Specifically, this study examines the multivariate relationships between a set of learning variables (i.e., sport involvement, event involvement, event attitude, emotional experience, brand knowledge, and brand-event relatedness) and a set of branding effect variables (i.e., perceived quality, attitudinal loyalty, and behavioural intention). Through a series of canonical correlation analyses on a survey data, we found evidence to support the associative learning account of branding effects.

The Olympic Games and associative sponsorship

“…This extends previous research, as the overall level of brand fit is low, but there is a high level of fit on a "primary" dimension which is more important to sponsors (Yooa and Donthub, 2001;Brakus et al, 2009;Low, 2000) and confirms that the Olympics is an attractive sponsorship event due to its high levels of Excitement (Waitt, 2003). We find that the longer a brand stays a sponsor, the stronger the brand personality congruence is on the dominant Excitement dimension, consistent with previous studies around consumer associative learning (Smith, 2004;Mao et al, 2013) When considering the possible interplay between sponsors, we find little evidence for between-sponsor brand personality congruence. The sponsor brands do not resemble each other when measured over all brand personality dimensions, nor do they resemble each other nor become more alike over time on the dominant Excitement dimension.…”

“…This extends previous research, as the overall level of brand fit is low, but there is a high level of fit on a "primary" dimension which is more important to sponsors (Yooa and Donthub, 2001;Brakus et al, 2009;Low, 2000) and confirms that the Olympics is an attractive sponsorship event due to its high levels of excitement (Waitt, 2003). We find that the longer a brand stays a sponsor, the stronger the brand personality congruence is on the dominant excitement dimension, consistent with previous studies around consumer associative learning (Smith, 2004;Mao et al, 2013).…”

“…The Coca-Cola brand makes the explicit connection between its own identity and that of the Olympic Games. This relates to associative learning theory, defined as "learning of the ways in which concepts are related" (Van Osselaer, 2012, p. 699), as a temporal process of exposure to a communication cue and an object and the resulting mental connection between the two (Mao et al, 2013). It describes what is happening for consumers when exposed to sponsorship activities, as the evaluative-based process strengthens the relationship with increased exposure and is foundational for consumers to learn about brand associations.…”

“…Sponsors are motivated to showcase their brand amid an event to build awareness and transfer positive event image aspects onto the sponsor brand image (Gwinner, 1997;Kim et al, 2009;Gwinner and Eaton, 1999). Associative learning effects exist for building awareness (Gupta et al, 2014;Shimp et al, 1991) as well as positive image transfer (Mao et al, 2013;Smith, 2004). From an awareness building perspective, associative learning can have strong effects for a lesser known brand and Shimp et al (1991) demonstrate that the conditioning effects of associated learning are stronger for unknown or moderately known brands when the cue is communicated with the object stimuli.…”

Assessing the relationships between image congruence, tourist satisfaction and intention to revisit in marathon tourism: the Shanghai International Marathon

“…CIC, similar to Gwinner and colleagues' (Gwinner, 1997;Gwinner & Eaton, 1999) functional congruence, is based on consumers' knowledge structure. AIC, on the other hand, is based on consumers' evaluative judgment (Mao, Zhang, Connaughton, Holland, & Spengler, 2013) The importance of congruence originates from the match-up hypothesis (Kahle & Homer 1985). The match-up hypothesis lies in advertising research that examins the impact of different types of endorsers on the endorsed brand (Lynch & Schuler 1994).…”