Guillaume Bodet

Building global football brand equity

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the perceived brand equity of professional football clubs on foreign markets as these clubs firmly want to expand and reach a global brand status.Design/methodology/approach – Fitting with an inductive approach, 12 semi‐structured interviews are conducted in order to analyse the perceptions of Chinese fans of four English Premier League clubs.Findings – The results of this research highlight the fact that the strength of professional football brand equity on the Chinese market is strongly determined by the level of brand awareness and perceived quality but, due to the increasing competition on foreign markets, professional football clubs need to clearly define their strategic marketing in order to improve the two other dimensions of brand equity, which are brand image and loyalty, which represents crucial stake to distinguish themselves.Originality/value – The results provide useful information for professional clubs in general which want to become global ...

International place branding through sporting events: a British perspective of the 2008 Beijing Olympics

Abstract The goal of this study is to examine if hosting major sporting events represents a relevant strategy to brand a place ‘internationally’ through brand association transfer and to identify whether or not it should be seen as co-branding process. Based on social representation theory and an abductive research strategy, a survey was carried out among British citizens to identify their opinions about the Olympic Games and the city of Beijing following the organisation of the Games in August 2008. The content and the structure of the social representations were analysed and then compared to determine whether or not a double transfer of associations occurred between the place and the sporting event. The analysis concludes that although there was a transfer of elements from the sporting event to the place, few clearly positive elements were transferred and several negative associations remain. The results do not explicitly corroborate the transfer of associations from the place to the sporting event. The paper confirms the value of sporting events in place branding strategies but highlights some limitations such as the transfer of negative elements and the lack of media control. It also highlights the importance of the place selection process to protect the sporting brand.

Do fans care about hot dogs? A satisfaction analysis of French ice hockey spectators.

The purpose of this research was to identify the contribution of sporting event service attributes to spectator satisfaction in a French ice hockey context. Based on the tetra-class model, the results demonstrated that some service attribute contributions vary upon spectators team identification whereas some do not. This survey highlighted the prior and non-prior service attributes in order to satisfy spectators, amateurs and fans and reinforced the crucial role of segmentation in sport event attendance analysis.

Brand social representations: strategic perspectives for a fitness club

The aim of this study was to identify an accurate tool to enable fitness club managers to discover those opinions or stereotypes which represent obstacles to joining their organisations. Starting with brand image, the analysis then considered social representations as relevant constructs for apprehending these opinions or prejudices. The use of a word association task and the model of basic cognitive schemes (Rouquette, 1990; 1994) provided access to the salient elements of the social representations of a particular sport brand and the way they are structured. The procedure combining these two stages represented a diagnostic tool for identifying the attractive and unattractive aspects of a French fitness club brand, which enabled the proposal of advice to the manager in terms of strategic and operational marketing orientations for recruiting new members.

'Give me a stadium and I will fill it' An analysis of the marketing management of Stade Français Paris rugby club

This paper analyses the marketing strategy, mix marketing and brand development of SF Paris rugby union club which has succeeded in attracting huge crowds (around 75 000 spectators) for several regular season games and building a strong brand equity. Parallels with American professional sports are drawn whereas differences with European clubs are highlighted. Finally, planning, consistency and especially innovation are identified as key factors of success in the implementation of the club’s marketing strategy.

Refining the relationship between ingroup identification and identity management strategies in the sport context: The moderating role of gender and the mediating role of negative mood

The aim of this exploratory research was to refine the relationship between ingroup identification and three classical identity-management strategies: individual mobility, social competition and social creativity. More specifically, in the particular context of sport spectators’ reactions to their team loss, we tested the moderating role of gender in differentiating the use of CORFing (distancing) strategy and the mediating role of negative mood in differentiating the use of social competition and social creativity strategies. To this end, 173 French physical education students were asked to watch an edited video clip about a defeat of the French national rugby union team. As expected, and consistent with past research, results first showed that the amount of team identification is a reliable determinant of the participants’ choice of an identity management strategy. Highly identified spectators were more associated with engaging themselves in ingroup-protective behaviors (i.e., blasting and boosting) than spectators low in team identification who, in contrast, privileged distancing strategies (i.e., CORFing). Moreover, results revealed that participant’s gender moderates the link between ingroup identification and CORFing strategy, and that negative mood mediates the ingroup identification—blasting strategy relationship. Theoretical implications of these moderating and mediating effects are then discussed.

Hotel Attributes and Consumer Satisfaction: A Cross-Country and Cross-Hotel Study

ABSTRACT The main purpose of this study was to identify the influence of the consumer’s country of residence on hotel service attributes’ contribution to consumer satisfaction. The hospitality services of Disneyland Paris in Paris, France, were analyzed in the context of the study. Data came from their seven hotels and comprised 47,885 valid questionnaires. The Tetraclasse model was applied to identify hotel attributes’ contribution to satisfaction and compare them for consumer segments from eight European countries and between hotels. Results showed that the four service attributes’ contributions are influenced by country of residence and vary between hotels.

Casual spectators and die-hard fans' reactions to their team defeat: A look at the role of territorial identification in elite French rugby

This research investigated the role of two foci of identification (team and territory) on identity management strategies used by sport followers in the particular context of elite French rugby union. In study 1 which dealt with casual spectators (N = 153), the results corroborated numerous studies conducted in the North-American context and showed that team identification constitutes a strong driver for offensive and loyalty reactions. In study 2 which dealt with die-hard fans (N = 64), it appeared that team identification seems to be the best predictor of team loyalty strategy whereas territorial identification seems to be the first predictor of offensive strategies. Taken together, the studies showed the importance of considering the specific context in which sport fanship takes place.

Olympic sport and physical activity promotion: the rise and fall of the London 2012 pre-event mass participation ‘legacy’

ABSTRACT The legacies of Sport Mega Events (SMEs) such as the Olympic Games are increasingly regarded as significant opportunities to increase sport and physical activity (PA) participation. Major sport/PA legacy objectives may even be pursued before the event takes place. This article examines a specific pre-event sport/PA policy target of the London 2012 Olympic Games: the aim of increasing overall participation by two million between June 2008 and the Games in 2012 (a target that was abandoned in 2011). Within a governmentality analytical framework, this research examined how London 2012’s pre-event sport/PA participation legacy targets were constructed by organisations responsible for their delivery. Three specific themes are discussed: the inconsistency between how sport/PA participation was constructed in terms of both ‘risk’ and ‘reward’ by different organisations; the reliance upon intangible concepts such as ‘inspiration’ and the status of the Olympic Games to increase participation; and the rationales given for the subsequent abandonment of the pre-event PA participation targets in 2011. The abandonment of the pre-Games participation targets holds two overarching policy implications for future SME host governments and organisers. First, host governments cannot rely on the unique status or ‘inspiration’ of the Games alone to increase participation and must pursue this more proactively. Second, the ultimate failure of these policies should not be attributed exclusively to their intrinsic limitations, but also to a range of external environmental factors. Pre-event SME legacies must therefore be planned with sufficient awareness of the social and political contexts in which the event takes place.

Consumer Behaviour in Sport and Events

This book is part of a Sport Marketing Series and focuses on the understanding of consumer behaviour in sport and events and related adapted marketing strategies and actions. The book comprises three parts articulated around 12 chapters. The first part opens with an introduction and a definition of Sport and Event Consumer Behaviour (SECB), which may represent the first attempt to define, bound and give unity to this research object. It then emphasizes the uniqueness of the sport and event product which appeals to specific marketing strategies and actions. In chapter 2, the author describes the sport consumer motivation process and introduces the SportWay motives which represents a set of five core needs and benefits provided by sport and are labelled with the acronym SPEED (Socialisation, Performance, Excitement, Esteem, Diversion). In chapter 3, the author analyses the sport decision-making sequence which provides the foundations for understanding why individuals initially choose and continually engage in sport consumption activities. This description of the decision-making sequence is a necessary step to development of an understanding of the Psychological Continuum Model (PCM) (Funk & James, 2001, 2006), a larger framework for understanding a consumer’s psychological connection to a sport object, also presented in this chapter. The first section of the book ends with a fourth chapter which identifies the four marketing actions defined by the author as: (1) strategic use of marketing mix, (2) selection of key target markets, (3) study and evaluation of the market and (4) selection of information systems. In the discussion of consumer segmentation (second marketing action), the author provides a way to practically categorize sport consumers according to the four stages of the PCM framework based on the measure of the different facets of consumer involvement. The second section of the book identifies the features of each stage of the PCM framework and provides adapted marketing actions for each of them. In chapter five, the author analyzes the drivers, processes and outcomes of sport object awareness and identifies sport-related marketing actions in relation to life-cycle positioning. Chapter six focuses on an analysis of the attraction stage and specific marketing triggers, such as social, cause-related, sponsorship and Internet levers. The following chapter describes the