Colleen Bee

Exploring the relationship between involvement, fan attraction, psychological commitment and behavioural loyalty in a sports spectator context

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.

It's Not Whether You Win or Lose; It's How The Game is Played

The current research investigates the interplay of program suspense, game outcome, advertisement placement, and ad execution on viewer reactions to advertising embedded in sports programming. In support of excitation transfer theory, results indicate that ad emotional response, attitude toward the ad, and attitude toward the brand are heightened immediately following a suspenseful sporting event. In addition, when considering both program suspense and game outcome, only program suspense was found to influence ad responses. Findings also indicate that congruency between program suspense and ad suspense moderates the influence of programming on responses to advertising such that an effect is found only in the context of suspenseful programming with suspenseful advertising.

Rivalries and sponsor affiliation: Examining the effects of social identity and argument strength on responses to sponsorship-related advertising messages

This study examines how social identities and message characteristics influence the processing of sponsorship associations and persuasive messages. Using an experimental approach we found that sponsor affiliation with a rival team results in a negative response by highly identified fans, even when message characteristics include strong, favorable arguments. Conversely, less identified fans formed evaluations based on message characteristics, such that strong arguments were evaluated more favorably than weak arguments, independent of sponsorship affiliation. Overall, the study confirmed that strong social identities influence information processing in ways that are favorable for in-group associations and unfavorable for out-group associations. The implications for both consumers and marketing communications practitioners are discussed.

Outcomes Are in the Eye of the Beholder

The purpose of the current research is to examine the influence of affective dispositions and the sequencing of affective and cognitive responses to mediated entertainment. Affective dispositions are manipulated to match a liked competitor against one who is disliked. The results indicate that viewers’ emotional responses and assessments of satisfaction with a win or loss were dependent on competitor liking. A hedonic reversal occurs in viewer disconfirmation emotions (relief and disappointment) and satisfaction judgments based on outcome desirability. A desirable (undesirable) outcome was one in which a liked (disliked) competitor won, or a disliked (liked) competitor lost. We also found evidence of mediated moderation such that competitor liking moderated the mediating effect of relief and disappointment on outcome satisfaction following an outcome. Outcome satisfaction, conceptualized as a cognitive judgment in our model, was then positively related to viewer enjoyment of the overall experience. Additi...

In-Group Favoritism, Out-Group Animosity, and Joint Conflict: The Role of Ambivalence in Response to Joint Sponsorships: An Abstract

Marketers often attempt to influence consumer attitudes by sponsoring properties for which their target consumers have an affinity. Building on the premises of balance theory (Heider, 1958), there is a liking transfer where the positive feelings toward the sponsored property carry over to the sponsoring brand. Research findings have also confirmed fans’ tendency to show an out-group negative bias through unfavorable responses to sponsors of rival teams (Bee & Dalakas, 2015; Bergkvist, 2012; Dalakas & Levin, 2005; Grohs et al., 2015). When only the favorite or only the rival team is involved in a sponsorship, it is easy for the consumer to respond to that sponsorship. The positive feelings toward the favorite team generate positive feelings toward the sponsor whereas the negative feelings toward a rival team lead to negative feelings toward their sponsor. However, when a sponsor partners with both teams, it creates a more challenging situation for the consumer. This study builds on the existing research and extends it by also assessing response to sponsorship of both a favored and a rival team. Moreover, we examine how ambivalence may influence consumer response to the different partnerships (in-group, out-group, or both). Data were collected from 162 students affiliated with a NCAA Division-1 institution known for its long-standing rivalry with another university in the state. Conducted in an online lab setting, participants were told that they would be viewing and evaluating prototype advertising. They were randomly directed to the one of the three ads containing the manipulation and then responded to an online questionnaire. Each ad featured the same generic color image, word, and image placement and the same fictitious energy bar brand. Team logos (favored, rival, or both logos) and the following statement were used to manipulate team affiliation: “Proud partner of the team (favored or rival) or teams (favored and rival).” A key finding of this study was that for responses to sole sponsorships it was only consumer identification that mattered leading to positive responses to sponsor of favored team and negative responses to sponsor of rival team. However, ambivalence was the best predictor of responses to joint sponsorships. Therefore, the results suggest consumer ambivalence can play an important role on how sponsorship information is processed and how attitudes are developed.

Consumer Over-Engagement: A Foundational Investigation of Sport Consumption Addiction

Both science and society have affirmed that people can be addicted to gambling, video gaming, the Internet, texting, and even sex. It appears that exciting, fun, often risky, autotelic behaviors can turn into addictions. Thus, a curious question arises in the field of sport consumer behavior – Can certain people (i.e., avid fans) become “over-engaged” and addicted to sport consumption? The purpose of this research is to further advance the study of compulsive consumption by proposing and exploring the somewhat unusual notion of sport consumption addiction (SCA).

Gender and Personality Drivers of Consumer Mixed Emotional Response

There is growing evidence the co-occurrence of both positive and negative emotions, or mixed emotions, is a common consumer response. Research on mixed emotions has improved our understanding over that of univariate measures by studying pairs of opposite-valence emotions (e.g., Larsen et al. 2001; Williams and Aaker 2002). Although examining several emotions should be more representative of actual consumption settings, there has been little effort to examine mixed emotions as aggregate positive and negative emotions. While affective reactions vary across individuals, there is a lack of insight into the influence of individual differences (e.g., gender and personality) on mixed emotions and attitudes. Examining gender as a driver of divergent mixed emotional response draws from differences between females and males in the experience and expression of emotion (Brody 1999; Grossman and Wood 1993).