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Drawing upon social judgment theory, the research examines whether changes in psychological involvement with a sport human brand owing to their sporting success can generate spillover effects on people's national pride, a proxy for the collective level of well-being and whether the individual's behavioral engagement in sport spectating will moderate this relationship.

Leveraging a quasi-natural experiment grounded in the 2021 Indian Premier League championship, the authors solicit responses from 296 representative individuals residing in India twice using a two-wave panel design. The authors conducted confirmatory factor analysis, repeated measures T-test, latent change score analysis, and structural regression analysis to examine the relationship between psychological involvement with sport human brand and national pride.

The results demonstrate a positive association between psychological involvement with sport human brand and national pride. Further, the findings indicate that an increase in psychological involvement with sport human brand was associated with an increase in national pride due to the successful athletic endeavor involving the sport human brand. However, the relationship between psychological involvement with sport human brand and national pride was invariant irrespective of patrons' spectatorship behavior.

This research demonstrates that sport human brands possess transformative soft power that extends their prerogative cultural identity personified by their athletic ability and success, allowing them to shape public sentiments of national pride via their profound influence through and beyond the complex network of brand ecosystems.

Situational involvement (SI) and enduring involvement (EI) are important predictors of spectator sports tourist behaviours. For this study, onsite and web surveys were utilised to help understand how SI and EI levels, with both event and destination, may vary according to the primary and secondary trip purpose of a spectator sports tourist. Results revealed differences between the two groups only within certain aspects of SI and EI with the destination.

In highlighting brain wave responses of emotional processing, the purpose of this study is to investigate (1) the effect of sport participation involvement on affective reaction in viewing photos; and (2) the association between affective reaction and behavioral intentions.

Using lateralized event-related potentials, the authors examined how brain wave reactions are different based on different sport involvement between two groups where one group had varsity sport experience while the other expressed that they were not fans of the sport.

Results indicated a significant difference in lateralization between groups. Brain responses were greater in the high involvement group and positively correlated with the intention to attend future games.

The findings in this study elucidate the linkage between one's history of sport involvement and affective brain wave responses. Implications from neurophysiological evidence provide means to further dissect the multifaceted construct of involvement in the field of sport marketing.

Sport has evolved into one of the largest industries in Australia and there is a corresponding increased interest in the factors influencing fan loyalty. This paper presents a theoretically developed conceptual model which empirically tests the relationships between fan identification, sports involvement, following sport and fan loyalty. Survey results indicate that fan identification, following sport and involvement positively influence fan loyalty, while following sport was found to mediate the involvement-fan identification relationship.

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 study is to develop a Sport Website Acceptance Model (SWAM) based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM; Davis, 1989). To better explain sports fans' decision-making processes in using sports websites, we incorporated salient consumer variables as sports involvement and psychological commitment and added trustworthiness and enjoyment to the TAM. The paper concludes with implications for future research and for application to online sports business.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the roles of employees’ involvement with the sponsored sport and cause in determining their beliefs about cause-related sport sponsorship.

Respondents completed a survey that included the measures of sport involvement, cause involvement, and sponsorship beliefs adapted from previous studies. The final sample included 131 attendees who identified themselves as employees of sponsors of a cause-related sport event in a web-based post-event survey. A multiple regression analysis was performed to test hypotheses.

Despite the prevailing logic that companies can enhance the perception of goodwill by sponsoring sport that is important to their employees, employees’ sport involvement was found to have no effect on their sponsorship beliefs. In contrast, cause involvement alone explained a large amount of the variance in those beliefs.

The findings contribute to the literature by indicating that how employees evaluate cause-related sport sponsorship may be different from their evaluation process of traditional sport sponsorship without the cause affiliation. This research highlights the need to conduct further internal marketing research specific to cause-related sport sponsorship.

Storytelling has long been a popular strategy in marketing. Despite its ubiquity, the influence of storytelling in the sport marketing literature has not been investigated, especially on consumers' perspective. Thus, the purpose of this study is to (a) examine the effect of storytelling on sport consumers, and (b) explore the moderation effect of product involvement on the relationship between storytelling and purchase intention of a signature sneaker.

Two experiments using 3 (storytelling: bullet-point type vs. athlete-based story vs. product-based story) × 2 (product involvement: low vs. high) between-subjects experimental design were conducted.

The main finding illustrates that both the athlete-based story and the product-based story had a stronger influence on a consumer's purchase intention than the information that was given in a bullet-point condition. This study provides a theoretical implication of storytelling strategy for sport marketing literature. From a managerial perspective, the authors heavily recommend the use of storytelling in sport product advertisements.

Previous literature has highlighted the effect of storytelling in sports organization such as professional sports team or utilization in social media. However, limited studies could be found in the sports product industry and consumer behavior sector. Thus, the current study has a significant value of understanding the storytelling strategy in the perspective of sports consumers as well as brand marketers.

Consumer loyalty has long been recognised as a key consideration of marketing strategies focused on customer retention. While the importance of the loyalty construct is widely recognised, the conditions and variables that foster consumer loyalty for a specific service may vary. This paper explores the variables that influence fan attendance at a professional sporting event. It extends prior research by conceptualising both a behavioural and an attitudinal component of loyalty, as well as considering fan involvement with the sport and attraction to the sport. The findings suggest that psychological commitment and resistance to change mediate the effect of fan attraction and involvement on behavioural loyalty in a professional sports context.

This study examined theoretical relationships between key variables of sponsorship effectiveness that include sponsor awareness, corporate image and future purchase intention. Involvement in the sport of soccer was also examined as a key consumer variable. Results suggested that favourable purchase intentions were more likely to occur when consumers held a positive image of the sponsoring companies and had a high level of sports involvement; and that consumers' sports involvement positively influenced sponsor awareness, corporate image and purchase intention.