Strategic marketing planning for football clubs: a value-based analysis

Co-opetition models for governing professional football

“…In second place, it should be stressed that a sports event taking place in a stadium involves a wide variety of complementary products (Vrontis et al 2014), such as food and drink, betting on the outcome, pre-game and mid-game entertainment, on top of the intangible product in the form of the atmosphere and the sense of sharing, known to draw in millions of spectators around the world. In third place, it is possible to state that sports entertainment is an experience involving-more or less-high suspense, which is, in turn, connected to the level of uncertainty in the outcome.…”

Contemporary sports club branding: Empirical findings on basketball and value-based conceptual constructs

“…In a developed world, dominated by media and other communication channels, perception often becomes a more critical parameter than reality itself (McCullough, Tsang, & Emmons, 2004, Naumann et al, 2001Palmer & Ponsonby, 2002;Thrassou & Vrontis, 2009). Vrontis, Thrassou, Kartakoullis and Kriemadis (2014) researched the subject of 'value' in the contemporary football consumer context and found that the marketing changes mentioned earlier have many, and profound implications for sports clubs. A sport, they support, as a product, bears two characteristics that potentially make it, on the one hand, especially 'mouldable' in the hands of marketers, and on the other, especially flexible in terms of target marketing.…”

“…Drawing from the works of Chebbi et al (2013), Thrassou, Vrontis, Chebbi and Yahiaoui (2012), Thrassou, Vrontis, Kartakoullis and Kriemadis (2012), and Vrontis et al (2014), we find that product value is a critical and defining factor of strategic and procedural design and innovation. Also, value appears to offer itself in a multitude of manifestations, each of which has a different relative weight depending both on the product and the individual stakeholder (external or internal).…”

“…With 'value' arising as both the cause and effect of organisational product design and development, both from the consumers' and the producers' side, Vrontis et al (2014) extrapolate their findings into a grid of value propositions/manifestations versus value stakeholders, for the product of football (a simplified form of it is shown in Table 3). They further note that: (a) there is a strong interrelation between the tangible and intangible value propositions, since the one may stem from and/or support the other; (b) the grid is football-specific, but still generic and practically implemented through individual club/market refinement and adaptation; (c) for clubs with international aspirations, there is a difficult dilemma relating to adaption or standardisation of their product design (Vrontis & Thrassou, 2007a, 2007b with consequent adoption of single or multiple grids accordingly; and (d) though the grid provides a much needed tool of football strategic marketing planning, the degree and nature of its usefulness is directly related to the degree and nature of the methods utilised in its adoption.…”

“…The latter category though, is not the exception, but constitutes a substantial part of clubs internationally (Vrontis et al, 2014), though no research was found to provide actual quantification of this phenomenon (which incidentally is an interesting field for new research). This research therefore continues to construct a Value-Based Brand Equity Framework ( Figure 5) that incorporates the findings of this research descriptively, but does not prescriptively interrelate these in a strategic context, as this will differ between clubs (as opposed to more orthodox profit-oriented organisations).…”