Sport Sponsorship: The Relationship Between Team Loyalty, Sponsorship Awareness, Attitude Toward the Sponsor, and Purchase Intentions

Abstract

Sponsorship studies have generally been focused on attitudinal measures of fan loyalty to understand the reactions to abstract sponsors. This study examines the relationships between both attitudinal and behavioral loyalty with sponsorship awareness, attitude toward two actual sponsors, and purchase intentions. Data were collected among fans of a professional soccer team, and the results of a structural equation model provide evidence that attitudinal loyalty impacts the attitude toward both sponsors and purchase intentions. Behavioral loyalty influences sponsorship awareness, and impacts differently the attitude and purchase intentions toward each sponsor. Sponsorship awareness influences significantly the attitude toward both sponsors, while the attitude toward the sponsor was the strongest predictor of purchase intentions. These findings highlight the importance of examining actual sponsors and suggest managerial implications, such as the need for sponsors to help attract fans to the stadium and to design additional activation strategies to improve sponsorship value.

Is Sport Sponsorship Global? Evidence from the United States, the United Kingdom, and India

“…However, the researchers targeted only CFC supporter clubs, which, per this study's invariance results, are homogenous groups that would not cast doubt on the validity of the research findings. Moreover, this study's sport fans displayed strong awareness, fit, attitude, and purchase intentions levels toward the sponsor across every analyzed country, which is in concordance with other sport sponsorship studies that have examined highly identified sport fans (e.g., Alexandris et al, 2012;Biscaia et al, 2013;Gwinner & Bennett, 2008). Fifth, the current study considered only five variables, and other variables may help to further explain sponsorship effectiveness.…”

“…In fact, attitude toward the sponsor was found to be the major predictor of purchase intentions for all analyzed countries, confirming the results of previous research on the link between attitude and intentions (cf. Biscaia et al, 2013). Thus, there are unique circumstances related to sport that international corporations should be aware of when they attempt to build more effective international sponsorship-linked marketing initiatives.…”

“…Previous results indicated that unaided recall is more accurate than aided recall when assessing sponsorship awareness (cf. Biscaia et al, 2013), and as such this research examined only unaided recall. In order to accurately test respondents' knowledge of CFC's jersey sponsor in the online survey, and to reduce outside Internet searches, the subjects had to input the jersey sponsor within 20 seconds before being automatically re-directed to the next survey page.…”

“…In addition, the use of actual sponsors, rather than abstract sponsors, should be a central theme in sponsorship research because sport fans may have varying attitudes and intentions toward different companies, teams, and sports (Biscaia et al, 2013).…”

Using servicescape to manage student commitment towards a higher education institution

“…The importance of commitment has long been recognised as a key ingredient of any successful relationship (Morgan and Hunt 1994), whether it is commitment to personal relationships, such as marriage (Kelmer, Rhoades, Stanley and Markman 2013), or towards sports teams (Biscaia, Correia, Rosado, Ross and Maroco 2013), or towards non-profit organisations (Vecina, Chacón, Marzana and Marta 2013), to mention but a few.…”