Choosing among alternative parties to be sponsored for supporting brand strategies, based upon emotional responses

Abstract

In recent years, much research has been concerned with the effects of sponsorships and the possible advantages a company can gain from engaging in sponsoring activities. Recently focus has been on the role, that sponsoring plays in branding strategy. Here it becomes important to understand exactly what a potential party to be sponsored contributes to the perception of a brand or a company. In this paper, the aim has been reversed to focus on the sponsored party. We propose a number of measurements to determine emotional responses and overall evaluations associated with a sponsored party who is a part of a sponsorship agreement with a company. Four different groups of parties to be sponsored are investigated: social aid organisations, culture, sport and TV-programmes. Several interesting results emerged from this study; the parties to be sponsored were evaluated very differently on the dimensions used in the study and it is shown that a company can gain very different results depending on the type of object to choose to sponsor. Furthermore, it was shown that the overall evaluation of a party to be sponsored to a large extent is determined by emotions.

Distinguishing between feelings and emotions in understanding communication effects

“…The design test and the logo tests are reported in more detail in Kristensen et al (2000), and the two sponsoring studies are reported in more detail in Hansen et al (2002). All tests are based on the variables used in the ELAM test.…”

“…We choose to look into the findings from the study concerned with how possible sponsoring objects (sponsees) are evaluated (Hansen et al, 2002) in a little more detail. Here, the respondents were 169 first-year undergraduate students at the Copenhagen Business School completing a self-administered questionnaire for which they received a book on advertising published by the Center for Communication Research as a reward.…”

An associative learning account of branding effects of sponsorship

“…Event involvement was defined as perceived relevance of an event to an individual, and was measured by Zaichkowsky's (1994) Personal Involvement Inventory. A measure of 20 statements assessing personal feelings developed by Hansen et al (2005) and Hansen, Halling and Christensen (2006) was chosen to assess emotional responses to the viewing of the event. Attitude toward the event was measured by three items that were adopted from Muehling and Laczniak (1988).…”

“…(Source: Adapted from Hansen, Halling & Christensen, 2006;Martensen et al, 2007. ) Event Attitude: Do you think the China Basketball Association Games are: Consumer Brand Knowledge: The following questions concern your experience with the following five* brands:…”

Measuring Consumer Reactions to Sponsoring Partnerships Based upon Emotional and Attitudinal Responses

“…Previous work (Hansen et al . 2002) indicates that emotional and attitudinal responses can be isolated and that responses vary depending on the type of sponsored object: sports institution, cultural institution or charitable institution.…”