Exploring user sentiment towards sponsorship and ambush marketing

Abstract

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.

Ends justify the means! Attitude toward ambush marketing

“…Although, with the help of advanced technology, sophisticated new methods have been employed by scholars in ambush marketing research (i.e. sentiment analysis on Twitter data; Burton, 2019), the most insightful observations are only possible with qualitative research. To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first study to examine consumers' mindset in terms of ambush marketing within a qualitative design.…”

“…Although Schmidt et al (2018) found sponsorship advertising to be slightly more effective than ambush ads, Pitt et al (2010) analyzed adverse effect in-depth and found that consumers' possible recommendation intention for the ambush firm was even higher than for the official sponsor. Furthermore, with the help of advanced technological methods, the effectiveness of ambush marketing has been shown by using secondary data comparing ambush firms with sponsors (Herzog, 2014; Burton, 2019). It may also damage the ambush firms' image when consumers correctly recognize the ambush marketer status (Yun et al , 2020).…”

The transformative impact of big data applications in sport marketing: current and future directions

“…Few studies were employed in the sport marketing space (e.g. Burton, 2019;Chang, 2019). The findings showed that fans expressed positive emotion while the team scored, whereas they showed negative emotion when the opponent's team scored Burton (2019) Examined consumer attitudes towards ambush marketing and official event sponsorship…”

“…The use of BD has gained popularity in social science (George et al , 2014; Humphreys and Wang, 2018; Lazer and Radford, 2017; Tonidandel et al , 2018) because data have become more readily available and the tools for analysis support improving science and practices. Correspondingly, the current interest in BD research among various domains of sport research has witnessed an increasing reliance on data-driven strategies with the fusion of BD and data analytics knowledge (Burton, 2019; DeSchriver et al , 2021; Gong et al , 2021; Lopez, 2020; Watanabe et al , 2021).…”

Exploring newsjacking as social media–based ambush marketing

“…Chanavat and Desbordes (2014) examination of social ambushing during the 2012 London Summer Olympic Games and Epstein's (2014) and McKelvey and Grady (2017) legal analyses of social media ambushing at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games offered preliminary investigations into social media ambush marketing, yet these discussions have largely been limited to the regulatory opportunities and efforts made by rights holders to restrict ambushing by brands online. Most recently, Burton (2019) provided an examination of consumer sentiment towards social ambushing within the context of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, affording a first in-depth exploration of social ambushing's rise and effects. The study's findings provided useful commentary on user perceptions of ambushing on social media channels, yet there remains considerable need for further investigation and development.…”