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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of a crisis situation in a sports team on the credibility of their sponsor and how the sponsor’s use of various crises response strategies may repair the damage done to their credibility.

A scenario experiment was conducted with a 2 (pre-/post-crisis) × 4 (sponsor response strategy: denial/distancing/rebuild/no response) mixed factor design. Respondents (n=191) were recruited from a research panel.

The results confirmed the existence of a spill-over effect: the sponsor’s credibility dropped as a result of the crisis. More interestingly, the effects of the crisis on sponsor credibility were moderated by the response strategy of the sponsor: the harm that the crisis did to the sponsor credibility was aggravated by a denial strategy, but somewhat weakened by a diminishing strategy. A rebuild response unexpectedly improved the credibility of the sponsor.

While partnerships in sports can be risky, because crises can be contagious, such partners can also help one another to protect their credibility. Therefore, this study advocates an integral approach of crisis communication. Sponsors may improve their credibility when they frame their contribution to the solution to the problems as an authentic effort to do good.

Starting from an issue arena perspective, this contribution shows how crises in sports teams also affect sponsors and how sponsors can contribute to the restoration of the damaged credibility with suitable responses to the crisis situation.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the following relationships in the Asian sports sponsorship context: first, the influence of self-congruity and perceived congruence on sponsor brand identification and sponsor credibility, respectively; second, the influence of sponsor brand identification and sponsor credibility on sponsor brand equity; and third, the mediating effect of sponsor brand identification and sponsor credibility on the relationship that self-congruity and perceived congruence each have with sponsor brand equity.

A field study was conducted in Taiwan, where 410 questionnaires were collected from baseball fans of the Chinese Professional Baseball League (the local professional baseball league).

The findings support all of the hypotheses and reveal that self-congruity and perceived congruence leverage sponsor brand equity through sponsor brand identification and sponsor credibility, respectively. Both sponsor brand identification and sponsor credibility partially mediate the relationship that self-congruity and perceived congruence each have with sponsor brand equity.

The findings of this study can assist sponsorship managers in realising how to leverage a sponsor brand equity.

The conceptual model investigated both direct and indirect (i.e. mediated) effects by providing different theoretical explanations to explore how self-congruity and perceived congruence leverage sponsor brand equity in the Asian sports sponsorship context.

It is not possible for every fan of a sport to watch matches at stadiums because of the capacity and location constraints. Furthermore, although sport fans could not physically attend sporting events during the COVID-19 pandemic, corporations still showed interest in sponsoring such events. To better understand this phenomenon, this study examined the effects of fans' event involvement on event reputation, event commercialization, corporate brand credibility, corporate brand image and purchase intentions of the corporate sponsor brand.

A total of 646 responses were collected from fans of Indian Premier League teams. Confirmatory factor analysis and covariance-based structural equation modelling analyses were conducted on the collected data.

Results showed that fans' involvement in televised sporting events had a positive influence on the events' reputation, which, in turn, had a significant impact on their corporate brand credibility and image. Furthermore, the corporate brand credibility and image had a positive impact on the fans' purchasing decisions.

This study provides valuable implications for marketing managers aiming to enhance their understanding of the impact of event sponsorship on corporate brands. In addition, the findings provide insight into how to support the development of effective sponsorship strategies in the future. The results suggest that sponsoring companies should consider maintaining the credibility and image of their brands to achieve the desired outcomes from sponsoring such sporting events.

To understand how esports viewers perceive endemic and non-endemic sponsors during an event.

The researchers employed a four-condition experiment. Participants were randomly assigned to watch a clip with one of four possible sponsors. After participants watched the stimuli, they responded to a questionnaire assessing their opinions of the sponsor in the clip they watched.

Generally, the more endemic a sponsor was, the more positive audience members had. Perceptions of credibility were also important to attitudes toward sponsors.

Esports is an emergent area where little empirical research has been published. This study is designed to expand upon research on sponsorships such that it explores audience perceptions of endemic versus non-endemic sponsors of esports events.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically verify the conventional cause‐and‐effect relationship of fan identification and purchase intention in the context of Asian fans when both the sponsoring firm and the sponsored team are Western. The paper also proposes and examines the mediating role of sponsor credibility and attitude towards sponsor in the relationship between fan identification and purchase intention.

A field study was conducted in Bangkok, Thailand, where 350 questionnaires were collected from football fans.

The findings reveal that, even when both the sponsoring firm and the sponsored sports team are western (i.e. foreign), Asian fans’ identification with the team increases their purchase intention for sponsoring firm's goods. The research also confirms that sponsor credibility and attitude towards sponsors partially mediate the fan identification‐purchase link.

The paper provides valuable insights into the under‐researched aspect of sports sponsorship, by examining the effect on Asian fans’ purchase intension when both the sponsoring firm and the sponsored sports team are western. Moreover, most of the prior literature on sports sponsorship focuses on the direct effect of fan identification on purchase intention. The current study extends the scope of knowledge on sports sponsorship by focusing on the under‐researched but crucial mediating effects of sponsor credibility and attitude towards sponsor.

This paper aims to investigate an integrated, holistic assessment of the characteristics by which consumers judge non-sponsored product review video (PRV) source, message and medium components as credible, and how these are linked to personal values for a deeper understanding of multidimensional credibility assessments of PRVs.

Employing a means-end approach, the authors draw on credibility theory and the persuasion knowledge model to analyse data from 21 in-depth semi-structured laddering interviews.

First, the authors demonstrate distinctive contributions of the video modality towards PRV credibility assessments and the interplay between specific PRV characteristics, cognitive and socio-emotional consequences, and personal values in an ongoing process of credibility assessment. Second, high persuasion knowledge creates awareness of the potential phoniness of the market, revealing a dark side to PRV use even in non-sponsored PRV seemingly created and shared as an act of benevolent concern between consumers.

This paper focused on the credibility of non-sponsored PRVs, future studies might investigate motivations and attributes by which users judge sponsored reviews. Also, the roles of specific product categories and existing brand trust on PRVs credibility provide avenues for further research.

This research offers practical implications for reviewers and brand managers to leverage the unique informational values of video by focusing on the interplay between credibility attributes and customer values.

This work advances credibility theory in the PRV context by examining how non-sponsored PRVs are evaluated as credible, by highlighting consumer persuasion knowledge and scepticism and including the holistic effects of the interplay between source, message and video format characteristics and by linking these to consumers’ goals and values.

The purpose of this study is to conduct a survey of Mexican millennials to measure the extent of negative bias and perceived advertising value they experienced toward the ads they encountered while performing a search for local products and services from their smartphones.

Using a paper survey with a scenario question, responses were collected from 1,215 millennial smartphone owners about the strategies they used for scanning mobile search organic and sponsored results and quickly reaching the information they needed when performing a mobile search. The 315 participants who reported clicking on ads were further surveyed on their perceptions of ad informativeness, entertainment, irritation and credibility. These constructs were used as the predictors of advertising value in a structural equations model which was estimated with partial least squares.

A substantial bias against sponsored results was found, with two-thirds of respondents skipping the ads when performing a mobile search from their smartphones. However, 28.2 per cent reported clicking on the most relevant result without regard to it being organic or sponsored, and an additional 5.6 per cent reported clicking on an ad as their first strategy. In the structural model, all four hypothesized antecedents of advertising value were significant, and some gender differences were detected.

With the increasing penetration of smartphones, and rapid growth of mobile search, these results are particularly relevant for local merchants, who can use mobile search ads to leverage their location and communicate with searching consumers at the precise moment when they are most receptive to timely and relevant advertising.

This study is the first to measure the extent of consumer bias against sponsored results in a mobile search, and the first empirical estimation of the advertising value of mobile-sponsored results.

This study explores the effect of video assistant referee (VAR) sponsorship on spectator response and compares it with advertising and conventional sponsorship.

An experiment with 809 subjects is conducted by analyzing 20 one-minute video clip stimuli from a Premier League soccer game divided into four formats: two formats of VAR sponsorship, advertising, and conventional sponsorship.

The results show that the indicators of recall, credibility, and perceived congruence improve when the VAR sponsorship format is used.

This is the first manuscript to examine the effectiveness of a new type of sponsorship: VAR sponsorship. This manuscript provides metrics that will guide practitioners on whether to use this type of sponsorship.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the congruence effect of the product and claimed environmental issue on green advertising on consumer responses as well as the moderation effect of the perceived green reputation of the product on the congruence effect.

A two-by-two designed experiment (high/low congruence × high/low green reputation) with a covariate (ad skepticism) was conducted via online survey recruiting 179 college students.

High congruence of green issue and product category generated positive ad attitude, sponsor attitude, behavioral intention (BI), sponsor credibility and message credibility. Low green reputation positively affected ad attitude and BI. An interaction effect of congruence and green reputation on BI occurred.

This study contributes to suggest a new approach to green reputation by examining a perception of a product category in terms of green reputation. The study findings recommend marketing communication managers to keep high congruence of their product category and claimed environmental issue to maximize communication effectiveness.

The complementarity factor stipulates that a sponsorship leveraging strategy can lead to suboptimal consumer responses unless advertising complements, rather than reinforces, the nature of the event-sponsor relationship. Study 1 showed that the best strategy when the sponsor is an official product provider for the event is to leverage the sponsorship through advertisements that emphasise its overall image and value as opposed to its products. However, the reverse is true when the sponsor is an official event partner, where a product-oriented sponsorship leveraging yields the best outcomes. Study 2 replicated the complementarity factor effect using a different event and different set of stimulus brands. It showed that consumer attributions, with respect to the sponsor's motivations, are the key mediating psychological mechanism.