What drives spectators’ experiential loyalty? A case study of the Olympic Football Tournament Rio 2016

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among the experiential quality (EQ) dimensions, experiential satisfaction (ES), experiential involvement (EI), host city image (HCI), experiential equity (EE), spectator affection (SA) and experiential loyalty (EL) in the sport context. Design/methodology/approach The data used in this study were based on a sample of 674 spectators from the finals of the men’s and women’s football tournaments held at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio, indicating that the proposed model fitted the data. Findings Findings show that the six EQ dimensions physical environment quality, outcome quality, access quality (AQ), game quality, trip quality (TQ) and security quality (SQ), EI, EE, HCI and SA positively influence ES. Also, EI moderates the relationship between HCI and EL. Moreover, EL is influenced by EI, HCI, SA and ES. Practical implications Results will assist sport management in developing and implementing market-orientated service strategies to increase the EQ dimensions, ES, EI, EE, HCI and SA in order to increase EL. Originality/value This study provides data that result in a better understanding of the relationships among the EQ dimensions, ES, EI, HCI, EE, SA and EL in the sporting context.

Stakeholder and Visitor Reflections of Sport Brand Positioning in South Africa

“…In addition to known challenges in destination contexts, the significance in operationalising brand positioning strategies is widely acknowledged in the literature (Janiszwska and In sch, 2012; Herstein and Berger, 2013;Insch, 2014;Saqib, 2019). Studies such as those of Herstein and Berger (2013), Allameh et a l. (2015), Lee et al (2018); Wu and Cheng (2018) attempt to operationalise brand positioning in the context of a specific (sport) market. Pik e's (2010) theory results in repeat visitation, brand awareness of visitor perceptions, interests, and traveling intentions.…”

“…This is particularly important to secure economic development and encourage lengthening of stays and or repeat visits to the destination. Based on the premise that branding constructs in relation to identity and image plays a significant role in influencing customer satisfaction and loyalty, and ultimately lead to brand equity (Allameh et al ., 2015;Wu and Cheng, 2018), it is worth researching destination branding in the context of brand positioning. This paper investigates sport as a competitive advantage and a strong motivator for brand positioning in specific (tourism) markets for host destinations.…”

Virtual reality experiences, attachment and experiential outcomes in tourism

“…Three items were applied to develop VR familiarity according to Sö derlund (2002) and Tan and Chang (2016). Four questions based on the studies of Wu and Cheng (2018a, 2018b, 2018c and Wu et al (2018) were used to measure VR experiential satisfaction. According to Wu (2017), three items were applied to measure VR experiential loyalty.…”

Spectators' perceived social benefits, subjective well-being and support intention: non-mega-parasporting events' educational perspective

“…Here, learning refers to obtaining new knowledge and skills (Spreitzer et al , 2005), which is positively associated with spectators' subjective well-being (Flinchbaugh et al , 2015; Zhai et al , 2020). Moreover, spectators' experience quality is known to impact their future behavior, but research on sporting event spectators is currently limited (Wu and Ai, 2016; Wu and Cheng, 2018).…”