Search results

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among nostalgia, customer equity and behavioral intentions. Specifically, consumers' intentions of purchase and word of mouth were assessed in this study.

A total of 272 responses were collected from football fans in Singapore. This study conducted partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to test hypotheses using SmartPLS 3.0.

Results showed that the paths from nostalgia to value equity, brand equity and relationship equity were significant, whereas the direct influence of nostalgia on revisit intention and word-of-mouth intention was not found. In addition, value equity, brand equity and relationship equity positively affected intentions of revisitation and word of mouth.

The findings contribute to expanding the literature by introducing nostalgia and providing theoretical and practical implications, which enable marketers and managers to predict consumers' behavior and optimize their customer equity.

While some football clubs are recognised as popular brands, little is known about the way they leverage their brand in their merchandise retailing. To address this gap the purpose of this paper is to investigate retail branding strategies used by professional football clubs through brand equity and supply chain management. In particular, it analyses the type of product merchandised, the reasons for selling certain products and the ways through which football clubs merchandise, including their partners in distribution channels.

A qualitative approach was undertaken involving content analysis of 22 Scottish professional football clubs’ websites and annual reports, and semi-structured interviews with seven football clubs retail managers and four supply chain partners. Transcribed data were coded and thematically organised through an inductive process using the qualitative data analysis software NVivo 10.

Three types of merchandise have been identified: basic, fashion and short season. Building brand equity is considered the main motive for retailing merchandise. Some football clubs use intermediaries or outsourcers to respond to sudden consumer demands and to ensure high levels of service, whereas others have an integrated supply chain which allows for greater control.

This paper contributes to the discussion on the role of retailing in football club brand equity. It suggests initiating intermediaries in the distribution channels to build brand equity thus enabling clubs to become more responsive to consumer demand.

This is the first paper to look at retail branding strategies of professional football clubs.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the conditions that facilitate or hinder a favorable reaction of fans to the resurrection of sport club brands.

The proposed model was empirically tested by applying partial least squares-SEM to a sample of 462 fans of five Romanian football and handball clubs that were resurrected in the last five years.

The study showed that a positive relationship between the new and the old club owners, the keeping of the brand name, and the involvement of the club’s historic figures are favorable conditions for a successful resurrection. The faded brands that enjoy salient heritage and numerous loyal fans are more likely to be successfully resurrected. Moreover, when the resurrection is undertaken immediately after the old club’s bankruptcy, fans tend to alienate from the brand, as they consider the new club to be trying to counterfeit the meaning of the faded brand.

The cross-sectional nature of the study and the narrow scope of the empirical data are the major limitations of the study.

Based on the empirical findings, the authors made recommendations to sport entrepreneurs who consider reviving faded clubs, and highlighted the difficulties of the resurrection process.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study of brand resurrection in the sports industry.

The purpose of this study was twofold. First, the authors analyzed how a major Canadian university sport brand was interpreted by its stakeholders and why the perception was so negative. Second, the researchers investigated how a dormant university sport brand could be revitalized.

A mixed-methods approach was designed. During the first year, a qualitative methodology was established. Researchers conducted 14 different focus groups, with students-athletes, students, coaches, university administrators, support staff and professors. In the second year, based on the initial findings, the researchers elaborated a quantitative protocol and built a multidimensional questionnaire which was administered to groups that were gravitating around the varsity brand. There were a total of 1,757 completed questionnaires.

The conclusions highlighted the weakness of the varsity brand and the limitations in leveraging the latter for the benefit of the institution. Contradictions in the marketing and branding decisions were noted, for which strategic recommendations were formulated.

In essence, the contributions of the paper relate to the strategic management of the brand and the mixed-methods approach borrowed in this research. Understanding how a brand is perceived is essential for managers in elaborating their strategy and, therefore, being able to connect effectively with their audience.

The potential strategic leverage of branding for universities becomes even more valuable as these institutions are increasingly using their varsity programs to compete with one another. This study specifically analyzes the case of a Canadian varsity brand whose values and resources differ greatly from other North American institutions.

Sport has evolved into one of the largest industries in Australia and there is a corresponding increased interest in the factors influencing fan loyalty. This paper presents a theoretically developed conceptual model which empirically tests the relationships between fan identification, sports involvement, following sport and fan loyalty. Survey results indicate that fan identification, following sport and involvement positively influence fan loyalty, while following sport was found to mediate the involvement-fan identification relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among an individual athlete’s brand equity, overall spectator satisfaction at sporting events and behavioral intentions.

The convenience sampling method was used when approaching potential participants among spectators of the LG Whisen Rhythmic All Stars 2013, a sporting event in which celebrated sports players perform choreographed dance routines. A total of 350 surveys were completed in Go-Yang, South Korea. Of the surveys collected, 20 were discarded due to excessive missing values, resulting in 330 usable surveys.

Using structural equation modeling, this study found that the brand equity of an individual athlete positively and directly affects the overall sporting event satisfaction and behavioral intentions, including re-purchase and word-of-mouth intentions among event attendees, which are factors that are mediated indirectly by satisfaction.

This study shows that the brand equity of an individual athlete can increase the spectator satisfaction levels in a similar manner to the brand equity of a sports team or product.

The aims of the research are twofold: (1) exploring whether football club stocks can be considered an asset class of their own; (2) investigating whether football stocks enable well-diversified investors to achieve more efficient risk-return combinations.

Using efficient frontier optimization, a base portfolio, with standard stocks and bonds, and a corresponding enhanced portfolio, which includes football stocks in the investment opportunity set, are defined. This procedure is applied to four portfolio composition rules. Pairwise comparisons of portfolio Sharpe ratios include a test for statistical significance.

The results indicate a low correlation of football stocks and standard stocks; thus, football stocks could be considered an asset class of their own. Nevertheless, the addition of football stocks to a well-diversified portfolio does not improve its risk-return efficiency because the weak performance of football stocks eliminates their advantage of low correlation.

This study contributes to the evidence that investments in football are different from ‘ordinary’ investments and need further research, particularly into market participants and their investment motives.

Football stocks are not attractive to pure financial investors. Thus, football clubs need to know more about which side benefits are appreciated by which kind of investor and how much it costs to produce these side benefits.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to analyse the risk-return efficiency of football stocks from the perspective of a pure financial investor, i.e. an investor in football stocks who does not earn side benefits, such as strategic investors or fan investors.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether stocks in football clubs are valued in line with the valuation of other capital assets in the capital market. Moreover, it analyzes the risk profile of football stocks. By taking this perspective, the paper also contributes to the discussion on the motives of those who invest in football clubs, particularly the question of whether they expect extra benefits, i.e., in addition to dividends and share price appreciation, from the investments.

The empirical study analyzes the share prices of 19 listed European football clubs from January 2010 to December 2016. Building on the capital asset pricing model, the authors used Zellner’s (1962) seemingly unrelated regressions.

The results indicate that the majority of the football clubs in the sample are overvalued. This implies that investments in football stocks are mainly attractive for those investors who expect to derive extra benefits from their investment. That might be likely for strategic, patron and fan investors, but not for purely financial investors.

As a next step, more advanced factor models could be applied to the analysis.

For investors, the results imply that portfolio diversification is particularly beneficial while buying football stocks. For football clubs, the rather low general market risk, combined with the overvaluation, leads to low equity costs when new shares are issued.

The results suggest that dividends and share price appreciation are not the only benefits football stock owners derive from the stocks, thus underlining that further investigations in their motives to hold football stocks are very promising.

With the available technological tools, fans are able to access sport products regardless of geographic proximity. Through technology, fans can follow sports teams from other countries. In contrast to previous research focused on the local fan, in this paper we report on a study of a group of distant fans – Chinese National Basketball Association (NBA) fans – as the focal object. The study was guided by three questions: RQ1: what motives drive a distant fan’s involvement with their favorite NBA team? RQ2: are there differences in the motives associated with the different stages of psychological connection among distant fans? RQ3: are there differences in the amount of media consumption at the different stages of psychological connection? The paper aims to discuss these issues.

An online survey was distributed to consumers of a Chinese sports message board to assess the motives of distant fans (n=281) following teams in the NBA, and strength of psychological connection to the NBA based on the psychological continuum model (PCM).

There were significant differences in the motives for following a distant NBA team among the respondents at different stages of psychological connection. Significant differences were also found among Chinese NBA fans at the respective stages regarding media consumption.

This study contributes to the advancement of knowledge regarding sport fandom. It is one of the first studies to include an assessment of the sport consumption motives of distant fans, more specifically, motives influencing Chinese fans’ consumption of the NBA. Utilizing the PCM allows for the segmentation of a specific fan population and to ascertain whether there are differences in the motives and behaviors associated with different stages of an individual’s psychological connection with a team.

The paper aims to compare two general team identification processes of consumers’ in-group-favor and out-group-animosity responses to sports sponsorship.

The paper draws on two studies and four samples of professional baseball fans in Taiwan (N = 1,294). In Study 1, data from the fans of three teams were analyzed by using multi-group structural equation modeling to account for team effects and to consider parallel in-group-favor and out-group-animosity processes. In Study 2, the fans of one team were sampled and randomly assigned to assess the sponsors of one of three specific competitor teams to account for differences in team competition and rivalry. In both studies, these two processes were compared using patterns of significant relationships and differences in the indirect identification-attitude-outcome relationships.

Positive outcomes of in-group-favor processes were broader in scope and were more pronounced in absolute magnitude than the negative outcomes of out-group-animosity processes across all outcomes and studies.

The research was conducted in one country and considered the sponsorship of one sport. It is possible that the results could differ for leagues within different countries, more global leagues and different fan bases.

The results suggest that managers should carefully consider whether the negative out-group-animosity outcomes are actually present, broad enough or strong enough to warrant costly or compromising intervention, because they might not always be present or meaningful.

The paper demonstrates the comparatively greater breadth and strength of in-group-favor processes when compared directly to out-group-animosity processes.