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The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into how consumers value sports team-branded merchandise. Two experiments are conducted to examine the effects of rivalry and team identification on evaluations of licensed product (Study 1). Study 2 examined the effects of team brand cue, team performance priming and product category on licensed product evaluations.

Study 1 (N = 104) examined the effects of team rivalry and team identification on multidimensional product values and purchase intent. In Study 2, a 3 (performance priming: positive/negative/neutral) × 2 (team brand cue: present/absent) × 2 (product category: symbolic/utilitarian) between-subjects design (N = 285) was utilized. Samples were recruited from students and alumni at a large Midwestern university in the USA. A series of multivariate analysis of covariance was conducted to test the proposed hypotheses.

Fans view a product licensed with a rival team’s logo to have significantly less functional, emotional and social value than a product licensed with their favorite team’s logo. Highly identified fans showed greater bias in evaluating the product than less identified fans. Team performance priming also moderated the effect of team brand cues on purchase intentions toward the licensed product.

Team identification level accentuates bias in valuations of a licensed product. In addition, better performance of a team further motivates purchase decisions. Use of a collegiate brand in this study limits generalizability of the findings.

Practitioners should realize that simple heuristic cues can change consumers’ perceptions of licensed merchandise product values.

The current study extends previous research on licensed product valuation by using multidimensional value propositions and a variety of product-related cues.

Skin tone has been shown to impact the ability of darker-skinned athletes to maximize their earnings to potential earnings ratio. Additionally, studies of fan preference have found strong support for racial implications on team preference and ticket sales. The purpose of this paper is to test these theories empirically by examining the marginal impact of skin tone on top selling jerseys.

This study makes use of an ordered probit regression analysis to examine the impact of NBA players’ skin tone on their jersey sales after controlling for a number of other factors. Jersey sales are measured in rank order and skin tone is captured by measuring the level of pigmentation in player profile photos.

Overall, the study finds a significantly positive relationship between skin tone and jersey sale rankings. This runs contrary to the standard literature results that darker-skinned athletes are likely to earn less and attract fewer endorsements than their lighter-skinned counterparts. More specifically, the marginal impact of skin tone is comparable to the marginal impact of individual player statistics in determining how well a player’s jersey will sell.

If, in fact, fans are more likely to purchase jerseys from darker-skinned NBA players, it stands to reason that the standard business practice found in the literature of rewarding lighter-skinned players with higher salaries and better endorsement deals requires further investigation.

This study provides valuable information about athlete branding and offers insights to advertisers and sponsors seeking to align the strategy of branding athletes for increased jersey sales.

The purchase drivers of merchandise sales rank in professional sport are examined at both a conceptual and an empirical level. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A database was constructed for all 30 clubs in the National Hockey League based on a conceptual model of relevant variables. Both public and private data sources were accessed, covering an extensive 12-season period (1999-2011), including the 2004-2005 lockout when the season was cancelled. Principal-components analysis was used to reduce the number of variables for regression analysis to distinguish relatedness and to gauge the influence of those variables on merchandise sales rank.

The results reveal that six club-based factors impact merchandise sales rank: Overall Fan Satisfaction, Media Exposure, On-Field Performance, Strength of a Club’s Brand, Local Market Dynamics, and Fan Capacity to Pay. These six categories of purchase drivers form a strong predictive model of merchandise sales rank in the National Hockey League.

The resulting model could be extended in future research by adding extra categories to the conceptual framework and by developing alternative or better measures of the variables the authors use. It could also be tested with other sales data as the dependent variable since the study was limited to ranking data on merchandise data for the National Hockey League clubs for each year. Future research could use the actual merchandise dollars for each club in a league to test the model. A further extension would be to model subparts of merchandise (such as jersey sales, impacts of brand changes, etc.). A similar area of future research would be to look at the role of individual athletes as opposed to clubs in driving merchandise sales rank or volume.

For managers in professional sport, the results suggest that there are steps that can be taken to improve merchandise sales rank (and, by extension, merchandise sales volume). Practitioners can develop and follow strategies in this regard. Results also suggest that practitioners should put the achievement of high Regional Television Ratings – the strongest influencing variable on merchandise sales rank – as a priority.

The results confirm that brand is important when attempting to increase merchandise sales rank. Club managers need to be cognizant of their brand and its impact on merchandising in all decisions.

The business of professional sport is evolving globally with new sources of revenue, including merchandising increasing in prominence. This research explores the drivers of merchandise sales rank in professional sport and provide direction on key antecedents. The study proposes and tests a conceptual model.

The relevance of merchandise for professional football clubs is uncontroversial. Especially the constantly growing e-commerce sales elicits disruptive market changes such as global brand visibility or data-driven customer relationship management strategies. To exhaust these possibilities, it is a precondition that merchandising costumers choose the official online fan shop as the first choice channel instead of a third-party supplier. Thus, the purpose of this study is to figure out if the club as a retailer and the loyalty to a club influence the fans' channel choice when purchasing licensed sports merchandise online.

To do so, a choice-based conjoint analysis for a jersey purchase embedded in an online questionnaire was conducted (sample: n = 589) to investigate the importance of the online supplier, relative to the tangible factors price, shipping speed and free added values and the influence of fan loyalty within the e-commerce purchase channel choice.

The findings reveal that the price has the highest relative importance (47%), but, as a sport specific peculiarity, the relative importance of the online supplier (22%) is higher than added values (20%) and shipping speed (11%). But, these overall findings are significantly affected by the level of fan loyalty. Based on the findings, implications that influence the fans' decision-making practices are derived for clubs.

This study is the one of the first in sports management research, focusing straight on the purchase channel importance (affected by fan loyalty) when purchasing merchandising online.

Using New Jersey as a case study, this article investigates the challenges faced by food retail stores. Policy recommendations proposed by industry representatives for improving the business climate are also presented. Although New Jersey‐specific, many of the issues discussed in the paper may be relevant elsewhere. Consequently, the findings can be helpful in identifying broad categories of factors affecting the vitality of the industry and in designing investigative research into problems facing the food retail industry.

This paper examines the organizational issues that arise when an organization transforms its IT infrastructure. The unanticipated changes in the IT infrastructure forced IS personnel to set new priorities that caused delays in other aspects of their work. There are several problems such as retention and burnout that IS directors must monitor carefully when their organizations introduce complex IT‐based projects that have strategic implications. This study identifies six major tactics that an organization may employ in order to ensure continuity and flexibility in its IS functions. These are: retaining by continuous training, evaluation by objectives, reward for smooth operations, reducing stress and burnout by encouraging creative ideas, job rotation, and finally involving IS personnel in the hiring process of new employees.

The case involved four accountants, a barrister and 12 separate tax ‘avoidance’ schemes. The accountants and the barrister were charged on an indictment with 14 counts of cheating the public revenue by falsely representing that the apparent purchases by the UK companies were bona fide commercial transactions.

Dietary Standards.—The methods used in an endeavour to ascertain the energy requirements of the average man doing moderate work have been discussed in the foregoing pages. At this point, therefore, some of the standards which have been suggested by various authorities may be considered. They are based in some instances entirely on results obtained from either scientific experiments or dietary studies, while in other cases advantage has been taken of a combination of both lines of enquiry. The best‐known standards are as follows:—

The purpose of this paper exploratory study is to decipher sport consumer associations and sentiments connected to the brand image of retired athletes.

In total, 14 sport consumers, who demonstrated an in-depth knowledge of throwback branding tactics and expertise in athlete brand promotion, participated in in-depth semi-structured interviews.

The findings indicate there are three prevalent themes across the present data (i.e. epoch epitome, athlete-team connection and off-the-field persona).

While the proliferation of throwback merchandise and affinity for brands of retired athletes is evident, the internalization of associations related to retired athletes has escaped empirical investigation. Numerous questions concerning how specific facets of a retired athlete’s image (e.g. athletic skills or life off the field) activate nostalgic feelings, drive consumer loyalty and establish market permanence remain unanswered. The current study contributes to the understanding of the brand image of the retired athlete and the existing literature concerning athlete branding.

The purpose of this paper is to seek to illuminate some of the dynamics of globalization that enable capital to advance its interests.

The paper uses theories of globalization focusing upon the “race‐to‐the‐bottom”. Such theories draw attention to the way major businesses are using their power to secure advantages, often by playing‐off one nation state against another. Increasingly, offshore financial centres (OFCs) are becoming key players in this race. The paper uses a case study relating to the enactment of limited liability partnership (LLP) in Jersey, a UK Crown Dependency. The legislation was financed and developed by the UK firms, Price Waterhouse and Ernst & Young in collaboration with a network of advisers.

The paper sheds light on the resources deployed by major accountancy firms to secure conditions necessary for the smooth accumulation of private wealth and power. Accountancy firms used OFCs or microstates to reposition the state‐capital relationship in globalization and reconfigure the UK auditor liability laws. The paper also highlights the importance of the state to capital and globalization.

In common with major capitalist enterprises, accountancy firms rarely provide background material to explain how they advance their interests. Inevitably, this limits the analysis. Nevertheless, the case study shows some trajectories that have enabled accountancy firms to advance their economic interests.

The paper shows that accountancy firms are able to use novel tactics to advance their interests and that national regulation cannot easily be understood without consideration of the wider international context.

Accounting researchers have rarely focused upon the use of offshore financial centres by major accountancy firms to advance their interests. It also shows that the local and the global are intertwined.