Effects of event-sponsor fit on consumers’ attitude toward corporate sponsors and intention to purchase sponsored products in different level of sponsorship advertising ; a team versus a league

Abstract

Given the intense interests by marketing practitioners in sponsoring sports events, an ability to determine the effectiveness of sponsorship as a means to increase sales and high return on investments is a primary concern of marketers and also homework left in the academic world to provide marketers compelling and insightful a guide for the implementation for market segmentation. In this study, this study examines the effects of target marketing in sport sponsorship advertising on audiences of corporate sponsors’ intended target as well as unintended target in two event-sponsor fit conditions: High fit and low fit. 2 x 2 experimental design is used to test hypotheses. Subjects were people who reside in U.S. Subject age is above 15 years. In this study, a total of 232 people participated in the study and advertisements created for the experiments, contain two logos from existing brands as a corporate sponsor and a sponsee. A type of brands is for testing the effect of event-sponsor fit, and a type of sponsees represents sponsoring companies’ intended target market. More specifically, Gatorade represents a sponsored product which is high in event-sponsor fit while Raid represents the one is low in event-sponsor fit. National Football League and Dallas Cowboys represent two different sponsorship market segments. The main effects and the interaction effects of the variables are analyzed how the combination of consumers’ assessments of event-sponsor fit and a different target marketing approach influences audiences’ attitudes toward corporate sponsors and purchase intentions. The findings illustrate that high in event-sponsor fit leads to more favorable attitude toward a sponsoring brand and greater purchase intention than low in event-sponsor fit. However, no significant differences were found between a group exposed to an ad with league-level sponsorship and a group exposed to team-level sponsorship ad. Possible reasons for the lack of significance are discussed along with the implications of the findings and direction is provided for future research.