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Alycen McAuley is the Director of Corporate Sponsorships for Charles Schwab, a Fortune 500 financial services company. Here she talks with Jay Gladden about the sponsorship industry, Schwab's goals with sponsorship, sponsorship evaluation and the future of corporate sponsorship.

This paper examines the relationship between brand associations (anything in the consumer's mind linked to a specific team brand) and brand loyalty in US professional sport. To study the relationship between 13 brand association dimensions and brand loyalty, a survey of professional sport consumers was completed (N = 929). Results of multiple regression analysis revealed positive relationships between fan identification, escape, nostalgia, and product delivery, and brand loyalty. Negative relationships were found between tradition, star players, and peer group acceptance, and brand loyalty.

To date, cause-related sport marketing (CRSM) has not received much academic attention. However, it is particularly relevant given recent estimates on the amounts that will be spent on cause-related efforts in 2002. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to set forth a framework for managing cause-related sport marketing programs. The framework is derived using both past research on causerelated marketing and branding theory. It theorizes the necessary conditions that must be present if the CRSM program is to result in the intended outcomes of 1) enhanced brand image, 2) enhanced brand loyalty and 3) consumer brand switching.

Given the importance of image matching as a rationale for sponsorship investment, this paper examines the extent to which image matching occurs in U.S. intercollegiate athletics. Utilizing student-athlete education and athletic program ethics as image dimensions, while controlling for winning, the authors find that individual corporations tend to sponsor athletic programs that project very different images. The authors then prescribe an approach that prospective sponsors could use to determine appropriate image matches.

The practice of an interscholastic athletic department reproducing the logo of a collegiate team for its own use is becoming increasingly visible. In response to this growth, many collegiate licensing departments have begun actively enforcing zero-tolerance policies that prohibit third parties from using their respective colleges’ trademarks. Conversely, other institutions have exercised discretion by allowing high school programs to use their athletic departments’ logos only after receiving assurances from the high school that it will adhere to strict usage guidelines. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The paper provides a thorough discussion on the concept of brand dilution and its application to sport. More specifically the study gives an account of the strategies employed by trademark specialists to protect (and in some cases, enhance) the equity of their brands. To identify these strategies, a qualitative questionnaire was employed, which was completed by 13 brand managers representing institutions from the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big 12 Conference, Big Ten Conference, Mid-American Conference, Missouri Valley Conference, Pac-12 Conference, and the Southeastern Conference.

Qualitative questionnaire responses from collegiate brand managers suggest that licensing departments differ in their perceptions of the outcomes associated with allowing logo replication in high school athletic departments.

Perceived consequences of two enforcement strategies – prohibitive and cooperative – are highlighted, as are implications and directions for future research.

The segmentation of customers into homogeneous groups is well researched, reflecting its importance to marketers. Specific to professional sports, published research on customer segmentation first occurred in the early 2000s, but no studies exist based on internal data from season ticket holders, an attractive and loyal customer group which is the most important customer for professional sports teams. Thus, the purpose of this research was to fill this gap in the literature through a sequential study of season ticket holders of a professional sports club.

Study 1 employed six focus groups (n = 56) to determine the constructs, understand the issues, and sequentially inform the survey instrument for the second study. Study 2 used an online survey (n = 1,007) to collect data on factors including socio-demographics, consumption, media engagement, fan satisfaction, future intentions and sports fan motivation.

The results identified the engagement factors and selection variables which drive season ticket holder purchase and allowed for the segmentation analysis, which identified fourteen unique fan segments for a professional sports club, generalizable to other clubs.

The identification of 14 segments of season ticket holders based on a sequential study framed by the sports relationship marketing model is a needed contribution for practice (i.e. a specific direction on how to efficiently allocate resources when marketing to season ticket holders) and advances our conceptual knowledge by applying the model to the context of the most loyal customers in professional sports season ticket holders.

Using uses and gratifications theory as a guide, the purpose of this paper is to examine how fans are engaging with Major League Baseball (MLB) teams that are utilizing Instagram postings to demonstrate sporting, business, and social objectives.

An analysis of 1,500 photos (50 from each team) was conducted. A content analysis analyzed the content of the photo, and a textual analysis was implemented to examine the use of hashtags by the teams on their Instagram photos.

Posts that overly demonstrated the business and social objectives had some of the lowest numbers of likes and comments, indicating that fan engagement is not often achieved through these methods.

Results of this research demonstrate that while MLB teams are able to address their multiple objectives on Instagram, fans are not necessarily interested in all three of these efforts. Posts about on-field action, consumer buying opportunities, and charitable efforts were all created by the majority of teams, but the sporting objective posts had, by far, the highest average number of both likes and comments when compared to the charitable and promotional objectives of the teams. Therefore, the results provide some best practices for teams looking to use the photo and video sharing network.

THERE has recently sprung up a great interest in antiques, probably due to Arthur Negus and his TV and broadcast programmes, and perhaps it is this which has made county librarians also, think about their past and their beginnings. Gloucestershire was the first to become aware of the fact that its library was fifty years old, and that a genuine antique, in the shape of its first librarian, still existed and could be questioned about the early days. So in December, 1967, the Gloucestershire Library Committee staged a most successful 50th birthday party, and invited me to cut the birthday cake, on which were 50 candles! And a very great occasion it was.