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This study seeks to examine the moderating role of team identification regarding the relationship between service quality and repurchase intentions among spectators of professional sports.

Quantitative data are collected from a questionnaire survey of 257 spectators attending a professional soccer game in Greece. Multiple regression analyses are used to assess the relationships among the constructs of service quality, repurchase intentions, and team identification.

Team identification is shown to moderate the relationship between service quality and repurchase intentions among spectators at this professional sports event. Both overall service quality and two specific service‐quality dimensions (“responsiveness” and “reliability”) are found to be positively associated with repurchase intentions only among respondents with low and medium team identification. No relationship is found between service quality and repurchase intentions among those with high team identification.

Managers of professional sports events who wish to increase attendances by improvements in service quality should first segment their customers according to degree of team affiliation. They should then design their service offerings specifically to meet the service‐quality expectations of sports fans with medium or low team identification.

The study provides valuable empirical evidence of the moderating role of team identification with regard to the relationship between service quality and repurchase intentions among consumers of professional sports events.

Since 2014, “sport for all” has been promoted as a new national strategy in China, which injects powerful dynamism and vitality for its development in numerous aspects. However, there has been very little feedback on sport service provision in community, and the satisfaction level of community participants is largely unmeasured. To promote physical and mental health of residents and form a stronger foundation of sport culture, more attention should be directed to community sports. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of community-sport service provisions on participants’ satisfaction and, in turn, on their sport participation behavior.

Community-sport program participants in China (n=576) responded to a survey measuring the proposed concepts.

Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that community-sport services in the areas of sport facility, grassroots sport organizations and sport activity programs had strong influences on participant satisfaction and, in turn, their desire for participation, which highlighted the demand for high-quality sport service provision by community.

The study contributed to the literature by proposing two clear dimensions (core sport service and peripheral sport service) for the measurement of public sport service provision in community sports. A second theoretical contribution of the study relates to the clarification of the relationship between the two dimensions of community-sport service provision (both core and peripheral services) and community participants’ satisfaction levels.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate issues relevant to service quality and propose a conceptual model addressing the convictions held by consumers in relation to the service quality of sport services as regards spectators and their influence on sport consumption.

A quantitative method was used for the purpose of this study and 1,643 questionnaires were gathered and analyzed. The current research intended to employ an integrated service quality model within the scope of sport spectating. The model included five fundamental factors and they were examined in association with the behavioral intentions that spectators have. By combining all these factors and aspects, it was attempted to shape consumers’ general perception regarding quality in service. The model of the research considers quality in service to be a hierarchical construct comprising many dimensions and it is observed that service quality can be classified into five factors, all of which can be defined by a variety of corresponding sub-factors.

The outcomes showed that four of the suggested factors regarding quality (i.e. game quality, augmented service quality, interaction quality and outcome quality) had an important as well as favorable influence on sport consumption.

The empirical evidence for this research is derived from one specific professional sport event (European Basketball League) and spectators who took part were from Greece. Future research could use a wider sample of sport events and the participation of spectators from various countries is necessary before such findings are generalized.

The present research provides a contemporary analysis of factors influencing sport spectators anticipated quality and their influence on sport consumption.

This study examines the mediating role of Overall Service Quality in the service quality-customer satisfaction relationship in the context of professional football. Quantitative data were collected from a survey of 415 spectators attending a professional football game in Greece. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was employed to examine the validity of the scale. Multiple regression analyses was used to assess the mediation effect of Overall Service Quality. Results of the CFA and alpha test supported the psychometric property of the scale. Overall Service Quality was shown to mediate the relationship between the five dimensions of service quality and fans' satisfaction.

In a major multi-sport event, the athlete is both a benefactor and producer of organizational activities. Athletes’ centrality makes understanding their satisfaction with the event an important management activity. The purpose of this paper is to examine the lived athletes experience (during the event), so as to provide insight into the important Games facets contributing to their satisfaction and to explore the controllable aspects of the event from an organizer’s perspective that athletes felt made the Games special and memorable.

A multi-dimensional instrument (i.e. Athlete Experience Questionnaire) was designed and tested at previous iterations of a major multi-sport event and was employed during Games-time. In total, 813 athletes completed the questionnaire during the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games.

The findings demonstrated an overall high level of satisfaction with the event. Several important facets contributed to athlete satisfaction including social-, service- and communication-related aspects. Further, athletes reported on the importance of cultural opportunities within their Games experience.

The paper denotes the importance of the social and cultural interactions and opportunities which lie outside the athletes’ actual competition experience and increase their specialness of the event. Theoretical and practical implications are drawn from the findings relative to the service-dominant logic and service-quality literature within a major multi-sport event Games for the athlete stakeholder.

This paper explores how athletes experience the major international multi-sport event environment. Moreover, this paper offers a significant contribution from a hard-to-reach population (i.e. elite-level international athletes), adopts their perspective of the Games environment and determines what contributes to their satisfaction. As the authors highlight, the paper denotes the importance of the planned social and cultural interactions and opportunities, which lie outside the athlete’s actual competition event experience, to increase athlete satisfaction; in contrast, basic sport competition needs seem to be a “basic” expectation.

The purpose of this paper is to test if the service quality model, proposed by Shonk and Chelladurai (2008), can be applied in the context of a small-scale sport event.

This model proposes the following dimensions: access quality, venue quality and contest quality. Furthermore the study aimed to test if satisfaction acts as a mediator of the relationships between service quality and behavioral intentions.

The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) provided support for the factorial validity of the service quality model. The psychometric properties of all the scales were satisfactory. In terms of the mediation analysis the results provided partially support for the hypotheses. Satisfaction fully mediated the relationship between access, venue quality and intention and partially mediated the relationship between contest quality and intentions. Furthermore, satisfaction partially mediated all the relationships between the quality dimensions and word-of-mouth communications. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.

This paper fulfils a need to develop a service quality model and its influence for visitors’ satisfaction and behavioral intentions at small-scale sport events.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically test the proposed measure of sports service quality (SSQ) and examine the relationships between emotional experience (EE) and user satisfaction (US) for sports competitions/training venues (i.e. for the sport of badminton).

Focus group discussions and related literature review were used to generate items for the SSQ. Structured questionnaires captured the perceptions of 240 users of sports venues in Malaysia. The relationships between SSQ, EE and US were assessed via structural equation modelling (SEM).

Results show that the SSQ has five dimensions (peripheral, reliability, responsiveness, core and value). Core, peripheral and value have positive effects on users’ EE whereas peripheral, reliability, responsiveness and core have positive effects on US. The SEM analysis suggests that EE mediates the relationship between SSQ and US.

The SSQ scale is developed using data from the badminton sport industry and is yet to be validated in other types of sports venues. In addition, measures of customer loyalty also need to be considered.

Findings suggest that provision of quality service directly influences satisfaction with sports venues and enhances the EE of customers. Sports venue managers should monitor the service management, particularly in terms of the physical environment and personnel.

This paper proposes a specific measure of service quality tailored for use in sports venues. It also provides further support for the mediating role EE plays in the service quality-satisfaction relationship.

Sporting goods retailing is a significant sector within the sport industry with the total revenue of this sector reaching $52.2 billion in 2018. Beset with formidable competition, sporting goods stores are compelled to augment their merchandise with service and improve retail quality. The purpose of this study is to investigate retail quality of sporting goods stores (RQSGS).

Based on 27,793 online reviews of 1481 stores in the United States, this study used Leximancer 4.0, a text mining software, to identify critical retail quality dimensions associated with sporting goods stores, and further explored the most salient dimensions among different levels of ratings.

Customer service and store aspects are the two higher-order dimensions of RQSGS; holistic experience, manager and staff are three themes under customer service, and product, B&M store and online–offline integration are three themes under store aspects. Furthermore, extreme reviews focus more on customer service, whereas lukewarm reviews focus more on store aspects.

Knowledgeable staff, managers and online–offline integration are instrumental in creating superior retail quality. Sporting goods stores should enhance hedonic and social values for consumers in order to ward off online competitions.

This study explored retail quality dimensions that are pertinent to sporting goods retailing utilizing text mining methods. This study to certain extent cross-validated the existing retailing literature that is developed on alternative methods.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how team identification and country influence professional baseball team spectators’ evaluations of service quality factors, perceived value and future behavioral intentions.

Data were collected online from sports consumers of the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) in Taiwan (n = 600) and Major League Baseball in the USA (n = 460). A regression-based estimation method (PROCESS) and structural equation modeling approach were used to assess the relationships.

Both direct and indirect (via perceived value) effects of most service quality factors (schedule convenience, economic consideration, game amenities, ticket service and venue quality) on behavioral intentions are stronger for lowly than for highly identified CPBL fans. The indirect effect of home team on behavioral intentions is stronger for the lowly identified CPBL fans. The direct effect of game amenities and the indirect effect of venue quality (via perceived value) on behavioral intentions are stronger for the highly identified MLB fans. The indirect effect of opposing team and economic consideration is stronger for the lowly identified MLB fans. The positive relationship between venue quality and perceived value is stronger for the USA than for Taiwan fans. The relationships between game amenities and perceived value and between perceived value and behavioral intention are perceived to be invariant between fans from the two countries. Taiwan fans’ behavioral intentions tend to be directly and indirectly affected by service quality factors, whereas US fans’ behavioral intentions tend to be indirectly affected by service quality factors.

The study provides empirical evidence of the moderating role of team identification associated with the relationships between separate service quality factors, perceived value and behavioral intentions among consumers of a professional spectator sports in two different countries.

This paper advances our understanding of the relationship between quality, value and satisfaction in the context of spectator sport services. This is achieved through an analysis and examination of relevant secondary data culminating in a conceptual model. Although extensive research has been conducted in the three separate areas of quality, value and satisfaction, to date no work has been reported attempting to develop macro models that capture the concepts and their potential interrelationships. Such macro models could enhance the communication and stimulate further research for sport marketing scholars. This paper proposes a model apposite for further research and in the process leads to the potential confirmation, rejection or indeed, adaptation of the conceptualization of sport services.