Search results

The few studies on the effects of a sponsorship termination do not consider the effects of different exit options on consumers’ attitudes toward the exiting sponsor. To fill this gap, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of the extent of the exit (gradual vs entire) as well as the timing of the announcement (early vs late) on consumers’ attitudes. Moreover, this research considers the mediating role of the perceived abandonment of the sponsored party.

This research uses an experimental study (n=204). Data were collected among supporters of a German second division soccer team.

The results emphasize that the extent of the exit as well as the timing of the announcement influences consumers’ attitudes. They develop negative attitudes toward the withdrawing sponsor, especially when the sponsor exits entirely instead of gradually and announces the decision late instead of early. Furthermore, the results reveal that the perceived abandonment of the sponsored party mediates the effect of the extent of exit on attitudes.

The results help to formulate several exit options for the withdrawing sponsor that will help to minimize the possible negative effects on their brand. Specifically, the author recommends a gradual exit as well as an early announcement of the decision to prevent negative effects on the sponsor brand.

This study expands the research on the effects of a sponsorship termination on consumers’ attitudes toward the sponsor brand. Specifically, it is the first study that considers several aspects regarding the sponsor management of a sponsorship termination as important determinants of consumers’ attitudes.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether consumers experience territory infringements during interactions with other consumers on firm-managed social media pages and, if so, how consumers respond. In offline contexts, feelings of territoriality affect consumers’ responses to other people in ways that are detrimental to the firm. Less is known about the effects of territoriality in response to consumer-to-consumer interactions on social media. Firms need to understand the implications of these interactions as they encourage consumer engagement on firm-owned social media pages.

The current research examines whether territorial consumer behaviors occur in response to co-consumers on social media pages for a brand (Study 1) and a product (Study 2) using experimental studies.

The studies provide evidence that a perceived territory infringement by a co-consumer can provoke retaliation toward the co-consumer and reduce engagement on the firm-owned social media page. Psychological ownership toward the product or brand amplifies these effects.

The findings were robust in the experimental scenarios that featured a brand and a product. However, future research should validate the results in a field study and include other brands and products.

The findings highlight conditions under which consumer-to-consumer interactions can decrease social media engagement on firm-owned social media pages.

The manuscript is the first to examine how territoriality and psychological ownership relate to negative consumer responses following consumer-to-consumer interactions on social media.

Online shopping cart abandonment presents a major problem for online fashion apparel retailers today. This exploratory research aims to validate scales that measure antecedents of online shopping cart abandonment (OSCA) and examine how these reasons contribute to OSCA behaviour. The findings indicated that the eight different reasons (financial reasons, organisational tool, time pressure, intangibility, privacy issues, aesthetic design, social influences and entertainment factors) that drive OSCA are distinct and account for unique variance in the model, validating the measures. Also, the findings revealed that financial reasons and using the cart as an organisational tool are the top two reasons why consumers abandon their carts. This study provides researchers with a better theoretical understanding of the reasons why consumers abandon their online shopping carts. It validates the various reasons why consumers abandon their shopping carts and provides valuable managerial insights on how online marketers may enhance the translation of online browsing behaviour into actual purchases.

Purpose – Little attention has been directed to investigating abandonment which refers to the deliberate choice of giving up something previously consumed. In this chapter, we look into meanings that motivate the abandonment of a product category and also the meanings abandonment gives rise to.

Design/methodology/approach – The research used a qualitative methodology to collect and analyze data obtained from in-depth interviews with 16 Brazilian consumers who gave up automobile ownership. This category was chosen due to its intense symbolic dimension.

Findings – The interviews suggest that, rather than being a discrete event, an action, or decision that is circumscribed by a given moment, abandonment is in fact a process. The analysis also outlines three types of abandonment: contingent, positional, and ideological. Contingent abandonment occurs when the individual, despite sharing the meanings with other consumers of the category, is forced to abandon consumption. Positional abandonment is driven mainly by the rejection of symbolic associations that consumption provides. Finally, ideological abandonment presents a collective perspective where the individual believes that society as a whole should abandon or reassess that consumption.

Practical implications (if applicable) – Results offer potential insights, for both governments and nongovernmental organizations involved in de-marketing efforts aimed at inappropriate consumption and companies interested in reversing the shrinking of their markets.

Originality/value – The present research broadens our knowledge of abandonment and allows us to situate it among other kinds of anticonsumption behaviors.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the perceptions of Qatar’s suitability to act a successful sports event host and, in doing so, look ahead to some of the key organisational challenges facing Qatar leading up to the World Cup in 2022. This paper is framed around the perceptions of nation branding and soft power and draws on the experiences of various key demographics who offer valuable insight into Qatar’s World Cup.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with football journalists, experienced tournament staff and volunteers, football supporters and expatriates working in the Gulf region. The paper is longitudinal in nature, with data collected between January 2010 and June 2018 including seven FIFA and FIFA-affiliated confederation events, namely, the 2011 Asia Cup in Qatar, the 2011 Gold Cup in USA, the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, the 2015 Copa America in Chile, the 2016 European Championships in France, the 2017 African Cup of Nations in Gabon and the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

The paper uncovers several concerns and considerations connected to hosting a first Middle Eastern World Cup in Qatar in 2022. The findings demonstrate some of the key organisational challenges facing the event which were found to include supporter access, security and the fan experience.

This paper examines Qatar in the context of the 2022 World Cup and its connection to soft power and nation branding. This particular event is so significant, not simply because it is the showcase tournament of the globe’s most popular sport from both a spectator and participation perspective, but because it represents such a notable divergence from previous editions. The majority of preceding World Cups have/will be hosted by highly populated countries with relatively developed football traditions and/or infrastructures. As a change to this pattern, the unique position of Qatar’s World Cup renders it as an important case study. This paper, which examines informed perspectives relating to access, security and diplomacy, provides a number of issues for Qatar’s World Cup organisers to consider.

Good abandonment behavior refers to users obtaining direct answers via search engine results pages (SERPs) without clicking any search result, which occurs commonly in mobile search. This study aims to better understand users' good abandonment behavior and perception, and then construct a good abandonment prediction model for mobile search with improved performance.

In this study, an in situ user mobile search experiment (N = 43) and a crowdsourcing survey (N = 1,379) were conducted. Good abandonment behavior was analyzed from a quantitative perspective, exploring users' search behavior characteristics from four aspects: session and query, SERPs, gestures and eye-tracking data.

Users show less engagement with SERPs in good abandonment, spending less time and using fewer gestures, and they pay more visual attention to answer-like results. It was also found that good abandonment behavior is often related to users' perceived difficulty of the searching tasks and trustworthiness in the search engine. A good abandonment prediction model in mobile search was constructed with a high accuracy (97.14%).

This study is the first to explore eye-tracking characteristics of users' good abandonment behavior in mobile search, and to explore users' perception of their good abandonment behavior. Visual attention features are introduced into good abandonment prediction in mobile search for the first time and proved to be important predictors in the proposed model.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of parental and peer norms on idol worship as well as the effect of idol worship on the intention to purchase and obtain the idol’s music products legally and illegally.

A stratified, two-stage, cluster sampling procedure was applied to a list of high schools obtained from the Ministry of Education in Taiwan. A return rate of 80 per cent yielded 723 usable questionnaires, the data from which were analysed by the LISREL structural equation modelling software.

The results suggest that both social worship and personal worship have a significant and positive impact on the intention to purchase music. However, personal worship has a negative impact on the intention to pirate music while social worship appears to strengthen it.

The findings suggest that idol worship is more complex than previously understood. The constructs chosen in this research should be seen only as a snapshot but other variables such as vanity trait, autonomy, romanticism or involvement are not taken into account. Future studies would benefit from inclusion of these variables and a wider geographical scope.

The findings contain many implications to help marketing executives and planners better revise their existing marketing and communication strategies to increase their revenue.

Existing research has tended to examine the impact of idol worship as a whole on the reduction of music piracy, but overlook the two-dimensional aspects of idol worship, hence ignoring the fact that many music firms have not properly utilised idol worship to deal with the challenges associated with music piracy. The findings broaden existing understanding about the causes of two different dimensions of idol worship and their different impacts on the intention to music piracy.

Since the arrival of mass production, commodification has been plaguing markets – none more so than that for music. By separating production and consumption in space and time, commodification challenges the very conditions underlying economic exchange. This chapter explores authenticity as the institutional response to the commodification of music, rekindling the relationship between isolated market participants in the increasingly digitized world of music. Building upon the “Production of Culture” perspective, we unpack the commodification of music across five different institutional realms – (1) production, (2) consumption, (3) selection, (4) appropriation, and (5) classification – and provide a thoroughly relational account of authenticity as an institutional practice.

This study aims to understand the reasons for individuals switching from traditional banks to Internet-only banks and examine how switching intentions differ between Generation X and Generation Z. Notably, Generation Z, being digital natives, exhibits distinct characteristics compared to Generation X, who often referred to as digital immigrants. Given the technology-driven nature of Internet-only banks, a multi-group analysis between these two generations was conducted.

This study utilizes Bansal’s push–pull–mooring model as a framework to analyze switching intention. The study collected survey data from 383 Korean participants, consisting of 198 participants from Generation Z and 185 participants from Generation X.

The findings indicate that low satisfaction and discomfort are factors that push people to leave traditional banks. Specifically, Generation Z shows a significantly higher inclination to leave traditional banks due to discomfort. On the other hand, relative advantage, compatibility, observability and trialability are factors that pull people to switch to Internet-only banks. Generation X is more likely to consider adopting Internet-only banks when compatibility is high and complexity is low.

This study is the first to explore unique motivators for Generation Z, such as their discomfort with interpersonal interactions in the retail banking sector. These findings challenge earlier research emphasizing human interaction’s importance in technology adoption, offering insights into their future adoption of contactless services.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate children’s perceptions and attitudes towards sponsorship transition, specifically the change from Nike to PUMA as kit sponsors for Manchester City Football Club (MCFC) in July 2019.

A sample of 368 children, between 7 and 16 years of age were recruited for the study. Using electronic diaries, 1,577 diary entries were captured between February 2019 and March 2020.

Data reveals that children conceptualise sponsorship as a social exchange, with sponsoring brands seen as human entities and interaction with them reflecting the dynamism of social and familial relationships. Consequently, children in this study demanded prosocial and interpersonal behaviours from sponsors and sponsee during the transition period.

The research has an immediate and direct application for brand managers and the sponsee when considering terminating long-term sponsorship. Both the departing and incoming sponsors can maximise their relationships with these younger fans through an orchestrated departure, arrival and dedicated handover.

The findings enable marketing brand managers to effectively evaluate sponsor transition to maximise opportunities to maintain, and indeed start, brand relationships with younger fans.

This is the first study that has examined sponsorship children’s responses to sponsorship transition.