The Structure of Value: Accounting for Taste George Mandler

This paper considers how the Internet can be used to leverage commercial sponsorships to enhance audience attitudes toward the sponsor. Definitions are offered that distinguish the terms leverage and activation with respect to sponsorship-linked marketing; leveraging encompasses all marketing communications collateral to the sponsorship investment, whereas activation relates to those communications that encourage interaction with the sponsor. Although activation in many instances may be limited to the immediate event-based audience, leveraging sponsorships via sponsors' Web sites enables activation at the mass-media audience level. Results of a Web site navigation experiment demonstrate that activational sponsor Web sites promote more favorable attitudes than do nonactivational Web sites. It is also shown that sponsorsponsee congruence effects generalize to the online environment, and that the effects of sponsorship articulation on audience attitudes are moderated by the commerciality of the explanation for the sponsor-sponsee relationship. Importantly, the study reveals that attitudinal effects associated with variations in leveraging, congruence, and orientation of articulation may be sustained across time.

Leveraging sponsorships on the Internet: Activation, congruence, and articulation

In advanced societies, lifestyles are increasingly sedentary, and it is important to identify strategies to help people acquire healthy habits, such as exercise. The present study proposes the use of gamification as a strategy for encouraging users to exercise regularly, based on the possibilities offered by “smart” devices such as smartbands.,The work analyzes how individuals experience their participation in a gamification program, on the premise that it should provide an experience that is intrinsically motivating and fun. Also the moderator effect of the gender and age on the relationship between their experience of participating in a gamification program and perceived self-efficacy.,The results show that individuals' experience of participating in a gamification program exerts a positive influence on their perceived self-efficacy in the practice of sport or exercise. The study also finds that the variables “gender” and “age” moderate the relationship between their experience of participating in a gamification program and perceived self-efficacy, such that it exerts a greater influence on women and older people.,The practical implications for the professionals and institutions involved in promoting the adoption of regular sport and exercise in society are about taking advantage of the potential of wearable technology such as smartbands. The present study finds that the use of gamification for encouraging people to adopt regular physical activity is more effective for women than for men, and for older people than for younger users.,The findings of this study provide a better understanding of whether gamification is an appropriate strategy for helping participants to perceive themselves as having greater self-efficacy in their chosen sport or exercise, taking into account the moderating effect of participant gender and age.

Influence of gamification on perceived self-efficacy: gender and age moderator effect

Non-cricket sports leagues are rapidly rising in an emerging market like India. With the advent of web 2.0, sports marketers are using social media platforms to popularize these sports leagues. How...

Exploring the Role of Social Media Communications in the Success of Professional Sports Leagues: An Emerging Market Perspective

The purpose of this paper is to identify how consumer engagement practices shape the dynamics of a soccer club virtual brand community.,A netnographic approach was employed. Using a Python script, more than 7,000 tweets about Sao Paulo FC soccer club on Twitter were collected and analyzed using the Virtual Brand Community Engagement Practices typology.,The dynamics of engagement relies on two types of practices: those that comprise the actions of tweeting, retweeting, replying to, mentioning and liking messages from and about the Sao Paulo FC soccer club profile and those derived from the proposition of Hollebeek et al. (2017). Given the dynamics of Twitter, some practices have performed differently than the original proposal, resulting in a slight adaptation of the framework.,Given the length and the netnographic nature of this study, its findings should be considered exploratory. Future studies can build upon the ideas presented here by researching different contexts and focal objects of engagement.,This paper provides the refinement of social media strategies and content development to make them more efficient and to establish a relevant communication channel with audiences. This knowledge can contribute to a better understanding of goals and metrics.,This paper is based on the behavioral nature of engagement in virtual brand communities, which is an increasing topic of interest. To date, few studies have examined online engagement using a practice approach specifically in the sports marketing context.

Soccer and Twitter: virtual brand community engagement practices

Using the context of Rio Olympic games, the purpose of this paper is to investigate attitude toward sponsorship outcome as it relates to purchase behavior, gender, sponsor patronage, sports enthusiasm, and social media consumption.,Data were collected using an online survey of 265 participants. Questions regarding demographics, viewing habits, sports participation, enthusiasm, attitude toward Olympic events were included in the survey. The four sub-scales were sponsorship attitude, sponsor patronage, social media consumption, and sports enthusiasm.,The findings of the study showed that social media consumption is positively related to attitude toward event and sports patronage. There was a significant gender difference on attitude toward event, social media consumption, and sports enthusiasm. Predictors for making a purchase as a result of seeing a social media advertisement were gender, playing competitive sport, and social media consumption.,This study will add to the body of academic and practitioner research on sponsorship outcomes, and provides an opportunity for marketers to leverage social media networks for sponsorship communication.,As the use of social media networks has increased over the past few years, no previous study has investigated association of sports enthusiasm, gender, or social media consumption toward sponsor patronage which relates to consumers seeking out sponsors and being influenced to make a purchase as a result of marketing communication of sponsors.

Sunil Hazari

Papers

Investigating social media consumption, sports enthusiasm, and gender on sponsorship outcomes in the context of Rio Olympics.