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The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between sport involvement, perceived event prestige and attendance intention of annual sporting events. In addition, it examines the moderating effects of gender and past experience on the proposed model.

Data were collected, using an on-site survey, from spectators (n=349) who attended the men’s or women’s basketball tournaments of the 2016 William Jones Cup held in Taiwan.

The results showed that perceived event prestige partially mediated the relationship between sport involvement and attendance intention of sporting events. Moreover, the moderating effects of gender and experience were found in the proposed model. Specifically, male spectators’ involvement had a significantly stronger influence on perceived event prestige, and, in turn, their perception of event prestige played a more significant role in influencing attendance intention. Also, sport involvement was more important in predicting attendance intention for experienced spectators whereas the prestige of the event was more important for first-time spectators.

This study suggests that sport event organizers need to employ different strategies in developing the subsequent editions of the event and retaining fans’ interest in the sport. Specifically, event organizers need to enhance the prestige of the sporting event through effective marketing communication to attract first-time spectators to the event.

The purpose of this paper is to explore cycling tourists’ experience in Singapore using an exploratory case study.

Tourist’s spontaneous reviews (n=409) posted on TripAdvisor were collected and analyzed through Leximancer.

The software identified 31 concepts grouped into five dominant themes of tourists’ experiences. In order of relative importance, the themes were tour, bike, guide, experience, and cycling. It revealed that most tourists have a favorable impression of their cycling experience in Singapore.

The findings suggest cycling tours can provide tourists with pleasurable experiences. Tourists embark on cycling tours in Singapore to learn more about the city and enjoy new experiences. However, to meet tourists’ expectations, bicycles must be well-maintained and accessible. In addition, tour guides should be attentive and knowledgeable. These have a direct effect on tourists’ satisfaction level with cycling tours.

This study aims to compare the purchase intention of counterfeit outdoor products between Taiwan and Hong Kong consumers.

A total of 584 respondents from Hong Kong (n = 247, 42%) and Taiwan (n = 337, 58%) were recruited for the study. Data analysis was performed by using structural equation modelling techniques.

The results showed that consumers' perceived risk had a negative influence on attitude and intention to purchase counterfeit outdoor products. Moreover, attitude towards buying counterfeit outdoor products, perceived behavioural control and subjective norm had positive impacts on purchase intention. Brand consciousness, however, had a negative influence on purchase intention. The multi-group analysis identified significant differences between Hong Kong and Taiwanese respondents.

This study provides a better understanding of how these factors affect purchase intention of counterfeit outdoor products across different cultures.

As sports sponsorship is a common marketing tool among commercial organisations, there had been a large number of studies examining the effectiveness of sponsorship. The aim of this study is to examine whether colour affects sponsorship effectiveness on printed advertisements of sports events. This is an area that has received less research interest.

In total, 85 participants were randomly assigned to a control group and three experimental groups. In each of the groups, the participants viewed an advertisement of a sports event on a computer linked to an eye tracker. In the control group, the logos of sponsors were in their original colours. In each of the three experimental groups, the logos were manipulated and featured greyscale, blue or red backgrounds.

The study found that sponsor recall and recognition rates were highest for the control group. Visual attention was also the highest in the control group.

The findings suggest that manipulating colours of the sponsors' logos can negatively affect attention and sponsorship effectiveness.

While there exist studies that focus on the effects of colour in sponsorship, they are typically conducted with regard to physically attending the event itself. However, sponsorship involves other marketing collaterals such as printed advertisements on the event. In such mediums, colour contrast is also important in print advertisements as it affects readability and legibility. As such, the examination of effect of colour on such marketing collaterals provides additional empirical support to the phenomenon.

Social network sites are becoming more visual-centric. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of visual social network sites as a marketing platform.

This paper comprises two experiments. The first experiment sought to examine the effect of social influence; while the second experiment examined the effect of image quality on the perception of quality and purchase intention.

The first experiment showed that social influence did not affect perceived quality or purchase intention. In the second experiment, a one-way between-groups multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) adjusting for sport involvement showed a statistically significant difference between the two groups. Respondents in the experimental group reported higher levels of perceived quality (adjusted M=3.68) and purchase intention (adjusted M=3.23) when compared to the control group’s perceived quality (adjusted M=3.12) and purchase intention (adjusted M=2.17).

One of the limitations of this study is that it only examined the effects through a single social network site, i.e. Instagram. As there are other visual-centric social network sites, such as Tumblr and Pinterest, which operate slightly different from Instagram, it remains to be established how such effects vary across these social network sites.

The results suggest that social influence on Instagram is limited and marketers should invest in images of high quality when marketing on visual social network sites.

While there are many studies examining the effectiveness of marketing on social network sites, these studies have primarily focussed on earlier social network sites, such as Facebook. Newer social network sites that are more visual-centric, such as Instagram, are different from earlier social network sites and studied to a lesser extent. This study adds insights on the marketing effectiveness of visual-centric social network sites and deepens the understanding on marketing in general on social media.

The majority of sponsorship studies were conducted on sports events of a long duration. Given that sponsor recall is affected by duration of exposure, the purpose of this paper is to examine whether sponsorship of an event of a shorter duration can be equally effective.

In total, 241 respondents were randomly distributed to one control group and three experimental groups. In all groups, respondents were tasked to watch a video clip of a swimming event lasting less than ten minutes.

In the control group (n=74), the mean number of correctly recalled brands was 2.26 (SD=1.31). This was comparable to the mean number of recalled brands in earlier studies on sports events of longer duration. In experimental group 1 (n=37), respondents watched a video clip without the logos of the sponsors along the length of the pool. The findings suggest that signages along the competition arena may have limited effect on the recall rate and that brand prominence affects the recall rate. In experimental group 2 (n=68), respondents were tasked to watch a swimming event with longer duration. In this case, the longer duration of exposure led to a significantly higher number of brands recalled (M=2.94, SD=1.36) as compared to the control group. In experimental group 3 (n=62), respondents were tasked to focus on the swimming event. When spectators were more involved in the swimming event, there was a significant decrease in the number of brands recalled (M=1.87, SD=1.35) when compared to the control group. The results from experimental groups 2 and 3 suggest that duration of exposure and spectator involvement affects the recall rate of sponsors.

The findings suggest that sponsorship of sports events with a short duration can be as effective as longer events although this is dependent on the prominence of the sponsor, duration of the event and spectator involvement.

Given that many sports events are now broadcasted on YouTube and other social media where the duration is typically short, it suggests that sponsors may also benefit from sports events that are broadcasted on these platforms.

The paper provides useful information on sponsor recall and its relationship to duration of exposure.

While advertising and sponsorship are conceptually different, many studies have used the same measures for both constructs. The assumption is that respondents perceive both domains similarly. The purpose of this study was to test the invariance of the belief measures between the advertising and sponsorship measurement models across different consumer segments and to provide empirical justification for the practice.

Two independent samples were recruited from two different consumer segments: university student consumers (n = 290) and general consumers (n = 324). This study conducted multigroup invariance tests using LISREL 8.80. The measurement and structural invariances were concerned with factor loadings (λ), factor variance and covariance (f) and error variance (θ) metrics.

The factor patterns of the belief model were generally invariant between the advertising and sponsorship models in both consumer groups. However, the respondents interpreted three items between advertising and sponsorship in different ways: one annoyance/irritation item in the generic consumer group and two falsity/no sense items in the student consumer groups.

While the invariance test reveals three problematic items, the majority of items seem to be invariant, concluding that the advertising belief scale could be applicable to the sponsorship context.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the purchase intention of counterfeit sporting goods between Singaporean and Taiwanese students using the Theory of Planned Behavior.

A quantitative approach was taken, collecting data from Singaporean and Taiwanese students studying in tertiary institutions. In total, 295 valid questionnaires were included in the data analysis.

The results showed that consumers’ attitude, subjective norm, and brand consciousness were predictive of purchase intention for both countries, whereas perceived behavioral control had an effect only among Taiwanese students. Further analysis showed that Singapore students had significantly higher positive attitudes toward the purchase of counterfeit sporting goods and higher levels of acceptance from peers in purchasing counterfeits.

A limitation of this study was that respondents were selected from the undergraduate population and as such were relatively younger than the general population.

The findings of this study provides a better understanding on how these factors affect purchase intention of counterfeit sporting goods across countries.