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This paper advances our understanding of the relationship between quality, value and satisfaction in the context of spectator sport services. This is achieved through an analysis and examination of relevant secondary data culminating in a conceptual model. Although extensive research has been conducted in the three separate areas of quality, value and satisfaction, to date no work has been reported attempting to develop macro models that capture the concepts and their potential interrelationships. Such macro models could enhance the communication and stimulate further research for sport marketing scholars. This paper proposes a model apposite for further research and in the process leads to the potential confirmation, rejection or indeed, adaptation of the conceptualization of sport services.

Hallmark sporting events often are commercially driven entertainment entities which represent an economically important part of the overall sport industry. Because of the high popularity of international sporting contests, hallmark sporting events attract significant commercial, media and consumer attention. Cities around the world are beginning to understand the potential of using these events to draw attention to the host city, which is why the market for hallmark sporting events is becoming increasingly competitive. In order to award the hosting of the event to the most suitable organizer, event owners often require potential hosts to bid. The most important elements in this process have been largely based on logical assumptions rather than empirical data. This study focused on the bid process in order to ascertain the important elements essential in achieving a successful bid. Using an international sample of 135 event owners and organizers, principal components analysis delivered eight factors that were deemed critical in the process of bidding for hallmark sporting events. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research along with their managerial implications.

The activewear industry would benefit from an evidence-based understanding of how activewear is incorporated into women’s lives and their changing participation in physical activity. Activewear brands may be missing the trend of women moving from organised sport to non-organised and individualised sport and recreation. The purpose of this paper is to explore the degree to which academic and industry research understood patterns and influences on female’s activewear consumption and identified what significant gaps are evident in understanding the drivers and industry trends that pertain to female consumers of activewear.

The systematic literature review sought academic and industry research papers. Articles were selected if they included female participants; and/or addressed consumer related information; and focussed on active wear. Article findings were thematically analysed.

Most literature exploring activewear consumption fails to take gender into consideration or explore unique female consumer profiles. Females are bringing activewear into other parts of their wardrobe and place more value on fashion, even for sports attire. Research identified the need for activewear brands to consider lifestyle, emotional and personality elements of consumer behaviour. However a specific focus on women’s branding was absent. Women’s age and generation influenced their activewear consumption. Although some industry reports discussed the shift in use of activewear, no studies explored the impact of the critical shift in women’s physical activity patterns on the activewear industry.

This review identifies the gap in knowledge regarding women’s activewear consumption patterns and needs, and the importance of reflecting the changes in female physical activity participation. It also links marketing and design of women’s activewear to the needs of female consumers based on their actual patterns and trends in physical activity. The findings are relevant to activewear researchers, brands, marketers and producers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate coaches' views on developing leadership and shared leadership capacity in particular in competitive youth football.

This qualitative examination focusses on the leadership philosophy of ten male coaches at the sub-elite competitive level in youth football in The Netherlands and applies the theory of shared leadership to examine coaches' views on developing leadership capacity.

Only few coaches have a clear philosophy on the development of leadership in general and/or shared leadership in particular. Most coaches do not have a distinct view on how to involve players in the team processes. Shared leadership development in youth teams occurs occasionally but can be implemented more intentionally.

Although this study lacks generalizability, coaches' views are required in understanding how shared leadership is to be developed in youth sport.

For implementing shared leadership in football purposefully, a clear view on the development of youth is required, whereas coaches need to be taught, how to involve the individual players in team processes such as decision-making. In addition, leadership development in sport may have the potential of transfer of skills to other domains.

Learning shared leadership at a young age by athletes can have a positive influence on relationships in teams on micro-level and might have an impact on meso-level within a football club because of its social constructionist approach.

This study is one of the first to apply shared leadership at the micro-level of competitive youth football making use of football coaches' view.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how team identification and country influence professional baseball team spectators’ evaluations of service quality factors, perceived value and future behavioral intentions.

Data were collected online from sports consumers of the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) in Taiwan (n = 600) and Major League Baseball in the USA (n = 460). A regression-based estimation method (PROCESS) and structural equation modeling approach were used to assess the relationships.

Both direct and indirect (via perceived value) effects of most service quality factors (schedule convenience, economic consideration, game amenities, ticket service and venue quality) on behavioral intentions are stronger for lowly than for highly identified CPBL fans. The indirect effect of home team on behavioral intentions is stronger for the lowly identified CPBL fans. The direct effect of game amenities and the indirect effect of venue quality (via perceived value) on behavioral intentions are stronger for the highly identified MLB fans. The indirect effect of opposing team and economic consideration is stronger for the lowly identified MLB fans. The positive relationship between venue quality and perceived value is stronger for the USA than for Taiwan fans. The relationships between game amenities and perceived value and between perceived value and behavioral intention are perceived to be invariant between fans from the two countries. Taiwan fans’ behavioral intentions tend to be directly and indirectly affected by service quality factors, whereas US fans’ behavioral intentions tend to be indirectly affected by service quality factors.

The study provides empirical evidence of the moderating role of team identification associated with the relationships between separate service quality factors, perceived value and behavioral intentions among consumers of a professional spectator sports in two different countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the quality assurance system IKGym (Quality Management System for Gymnastics Clubs), on professionalisation, homogenisation and organisational performance in a sample of gymnastics clubs affiliated to the Flemish Gymnastics Federation.

Data were drawn from a sample of 55 non-profit local Flemish gymnastics clubs, evaluated twice by IKGym between 2004 and 2010. Using a longitudinal analysis of quantitative data of the IKGym data set a paired samples t-test was conducted to measure the impact of IKGym on the sample of gymnastics clubs. Besides, the Pitman-Morgan test was conducted to measure if the gymnastics clubs have become more isomorphic because of IKGym.

First, the results identify different levels of progression towards professionalisation between various quality and performance targets of the gymnastics clubs and depending on the structural design types of these clubs. Second, it was found that during the organisational change the sample of clubs also started to resemble each other more. However, this homogenisation process seems restricted to the organisational management and strategic planning of the clubs and appears especially to clubs belonging to the volunteer structure. Third, the present study also indicates that IKGym has influenced clubs to perform better.

IKGym is considered as a pioneering project where a federation stimulated their clubs to professionalise by means of a system of quality assurance. Several federations and sporting leagues (Deutsche Bundesliga, English Premier League; Belgian Basketballiga, etc.) followed this lead and introduced a similar system to evaluate and direct the management of their clubs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among the core product quality (team characteristics and player performance), emotion (anxiety, anger, dejection, happiness, and excitement), and the fans behavioral intentions.

Data were gathered on the team characteristics and player performance, emotions of anxiety, anger, dejection, happiness, and excitement using a survey from subjects comprised of 233 spectators attending Iranian Premier League soccer matches.

The results showed that both the core product quality dimensions of the team characteristics and player performance are related significantly to the negative emotion of anxiety and both positive emotions of excitement and happiness. Moreover, the positive emotions of excitement and happiness were positively related to the fan attendance, while the negative emotions of anxiety and dejection were negatively and significantly related to the fans behavioral intentions. The practical implications of the findings are discussed briefly.

The paper provides useful information for sports marketing executives, suggesting that they strive for unique organizational advantages and employ them in their marketing messages when their teams are unsuccessful. Such a strategy can allow organizations to maximize the positive emotions of spectators in the face of poor core product quality.

This paper aims to explore the impact of the experience of a winery visit to the visitor’s emotions and the effect of these emotions on visitor’s intention to revisit and recommend a winery as consequences of visitor satisfaction.

The study adopted a multi approach of customer experience, suggesting that visitors base their experience perception on the servicescape attributes, other visitors’ suitable behaviours and their own yearn for cognitive learning and fun. Path analysis is adopted to measure the impact of these constructs on visitor’s emotions and the role of these emotions in predicting visitor’s satisfaction and behavioural intentions. Data are collected through a self-administered highly structured questionnaire, self-completed by respondents at each winery. A total of 615 usable responses are obtained from eight wineries.

The results indicate that emotions are arisen – in a context of wine tourism – as a result of visitor’s evaluation of winery environment (especially Atmospherics, Signage and Facilities), other visitors’ appropriate behaviour and visitor’s desire to learn something new and to have fun during the winery experience. Also, it is revealed that visitor’s emotions positively impact on his/her satisfaction, which in turn seems to be a significant predictor of his/her intention to revisit the winery and give positive word-of-mouth.

The findings broaden the knowledge on visitor’s winery experience and its impact on visitor’s satisfaction and future behavioural intentions. However, because the study focuses only on winery visitors in Greece, the research results may lack generalizability. The application of the study to other wineries would allow for wider generalisations to be made from the results obtained.

The overall findings may have significant implications for wine tourism industries. Also, it might be beneficial for wineries in their effort to provide a more valuable experience to wine tourists and in increasing wine tourists’ loyalty.

The paper’s originality lies in providing information to clarify the relationships between the constructs of experience, visitor’s emotions, satisfaction and future behavioural intentions in a winery setting. Also, this study provides new and practical insights of winery experience in the Greek context, an area where very limited research has been conducted. Finally, this is one of the few studies that focus on more than two servicescape elements and their impact on visitor’s emotions.

This study proposed and tested a new conceptual model of memorable volunteer tourism experiences (MVTEs) by examining the effects of novelty, meaningfulness, experience co-creation and experience intensification on MVTEs. It also examined the relationships among MVTEs, psychological resilience (PR) and behavioural intention (BI), including that between novelty and BI.

The study modelled the proposed relationships by analysing data from an online survey using Amazon Mechanical Turk. In total, 241 responses were used in the data analysis.

This study extended the MVTE construct and included four key antecedents that influence tourists' MVTEs. The study also documented the predictive capability of MVTEs for PR and BI.

Volunteer tourism organisations should offer new and diverse activities for volunteer tourists, such as nature conservation, wildlife protection and construction.

This is the first study to examine the antecedents and outcomes of MVTEs using the stimuli–organism–response theory.