Russell Lacey

How Fit Connects Service Brand Sponsors with Consumers’ Passions for Sponsored Events

Despite the strong trend for service brands sponsoring events, the literature provides few theory-based and field-tested guidelines for services marketing managers who are charged with selecting events to sponsor. In response, this study provides a congruity-based framework for sponsors’ decision-making and tests the hypothesized model explaining linkages among service brand sponsors, a sporting event, and consumer attitudes. The study’s findings help clarify not only how congruent event-sponsor fit can be realised but also the potentially valuable role that event-sponsor fit serves toward strengthening key consumer relationship outcomes.Structural equation modeling is used to test the posited model using replicate samples of two distinct service brands (AT&T: n=563 and United Community Bank: n=435) operating at different levels of corporate sponsorship of the sixth annual Tour de Georgia (TDG) professional cycling race which drew an estimated 400,000 attendees. Investigation of the effectiveness of different brands at the same event is important to marketers as it reflects the plethora of brand messages typically communicated at sports events. The results do not reveal that tested individual brand sponsor congruity moderates consumers’ attitudes toward the event or sponsor. Surprisingly, AT&T did not experience any discernable advantage of sponsorship, despite its position as the title sponsor of the TDG and its high brand equity. Based on this preliminary evidence, the results offer directional evidence that sponsors may not necessarily reap results that are commensurate with their sponsorship level or brand equity position. Thus, established regional service brands may experience sponsorship effectiveness at regional or community events where their sponsorship investments can be recognised without serving as the title sponsor.The current study extends previous congruity research because it lays out contributing factors for establishing event-sponsor fit. As a form of fan involvement, activeness in the event domain (i.e., sports activity) is shown to positively influence how consumers assess the link between an individual service brand and the tested sponsored sports event. In addition, the results make it clear that consumers form more favourable event-sponsor linkages when they enjoy the event as consumer affect toward the event is shown to positively and directly influence their perceptions of event-sponsor fit. This finding is particularly relevant for service brands high in functional or utilitarian properties. In particular, sponsorship of hedonic events can convey similar values and imagery and/or offer a logical connection with the service brand. In addition, the hypothesized path between consumers’ brand knowledge and their assessments of the sponsor’s fit with the event finds multi-contextual support. The study further demonstrates how desirable relational outcomes are positively influenced by event-sponsor fit. Specifically, congruency positively and directly influences consumer’s favourable brand commitment to the sponsor’s brands, which in turn, benefits the sponsor by consumers’ intentions to purchase the sponsor’s services. Overall, the findings show how events and service brand sponsorships synergistically facilitate and deepen consumer relationships by connecting service brands with consumers’ passions for the sponsored event and its activities.

Visual Processing and Need for Cognition Can Enhance Event-Sponsorship Outcomes

ABSTRACT How do sporting-event attendees visually or cognitively process sponsorship? In the context of a professional tennis event, the current study examined attendees visual processing and need for cognition in sponsorship processing. Need for cognition is a personality variable in psychology that reflects the extent to which consumers engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activities. Findings demonstrated how visual processing played a role in the way attendees perceived sponsorship. Attendees who were high in need for cognition more likely would evaluate a non-endemic sponsor as fitting with the event than attendees who were lower in need for cognition.

Communicating Corporate Responsibility To Fit Consumer Perceptions: How Sincerity Drives Event and Sponsor Outcomes

ABSTRACT Because event sponsorship has been used widely as a means to communicate corporate social responsibility (CSR), managers evince interest in the interplay among events, sponsorship, and CSR. Particularly important is the intersection between event sponsorship and CSR—namely, the event as a marketing-communication venue to convey CSR. This article presents a theoretically driven framework showing how attendees perceptions of an event as socially responsible and their perceptions of sponsor sincerity affect both the event and the sponsor.

How the Anticipation Can Be as Great as the Experience: Explaining Event Sponsorship Exhibit Outcomes Via Affective Forecasting

Via field surveys of attendees at a multiday professional sporting event (n = 1,089), the authors contribute an interesting finding—that the anticipation of participating in an event sponsors exhibit area is just as great as the experience itself when it comes to evaluating the sponsor. The studys results suggest that the mere presence of event marketing activities (in addition to sponsorship communications) improves sponsorship outcomes. Affective forecasting theory is introduced to the advertising/event marketing literature here, and is used to explain the studys findings and provide implications for advertisers who engage in sponsored event marketing.

Chronic negative circumstances and compulsive buying: consumer vulnerability after a natural disaster

This research is composed of two cross-sectional studies that examine the lingering emotional distress associated with a natural disaster and extend the understanding of its impact on consumption attitudes and behaviors when victims are confronted with additional challenges. The first study examines victims (n = 426) depression-induced impulsive and compulsive buying after Hurricane Katrina; the second investigates how the recession has exacerbated victims (n = 191) lingering stress and depressive states, and the effects of these on consumption. These historical events provide a unique opportunity to extend the life event and disaster research and to examine the relationship between negative events and specific consumer behaviors. Results indicate that, years later, compulsive buying has not subsided, and the adversity brought on by the recession appears to have contributed to extended depressive states. Implications for marketers and public policy makers are discussed, as they relate to how vulnerable consumers cope with negative life events.

Sponsors Courting Tennis Fans: Visual Processing and Need for Cognition in Evaluating Event Sponsorship

Given that sporting events are heavily tied to sponsorship, it is crucial to understand how sponsorship works from visual processing and cognition perspectives. In itself, sponsorship is not necessarily a visual tool; it is the on-site leveraging of sponsorship that is often visual for event attendees and what the authors investigate at a professional tennis event. Leveraging title sponsorships with the sponsor’s logo and product displays at the event are industry practice at professional sporting events. Visual reinforcement is important in visual processing because an event attendee actively or passively sees who the sponsor is without necessarily thinking about the event sponsorship. Need for cognition is a personality variable in psychology that reflects the extent and the effort in which consumers engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activities. Attendees may interpret a sponsorship according to its “shallow meaning” without relative effort, unless they have reason to elaborate further and consider other inputs to judgment. The authors take a multi-method approach to examine the posited relationships of their model. First, for a consumer perspective, the hypotheses are tested with consumer survey data of 185 attendees drawn from a weeklong women’s professional tennis event. A luxury automobile brand served as the event’s title sponsor and used visual placement throughout the context of the event, including at the heart of action (e.g., logo in the net, product display at the event). Empirical support for the hypothesized model demonstrates that individual differences in visual processing and need for cognition play significant roles in how an attendee perceives the title sponsor’s products. Overall findings also show how attendees who rate the event as a high quality event have a more positive attitude toward the title sponsor’s featured products. That relationship is moderated by visual processing style; that is, visual processors show an especially strong link from event quality to enhanced attitude. Further, attendees who are high in need for cognition are more likely evaluate a non-endemic title sponsor as fitting with the event, plausibly because they tend to elaborate, or think about how the two fit more so than attendees who are lower in need for cognition. After testing the model with consumer data drawn at the tennis event, the authors then conducted a qualitative study to better understand how the findings resonate with practitioners, and to gain additional managerial insights. Thus, the authors interviewed a dozen managers, who worked with venues or sponsors to leverage the visual communication and create an engaging consumer experience for attendees, collectively representing marketing expertise in tennis, baseball, hockey, running and basketball. The managers discussed the findings in terms of how they do or will implement them in their respective professional sport. The results provide managers with new insights for understanding the role of individual differences in visual processing and need for cognition play in effective sponsorship and sports marketing. The findings reveal how the manner in which event attendees visualize and think relates to their assessment of a sporting event and sponsor. Individuals who tend to be more visual and think things through fully will positively influence their level of appreciation for the sporting event’s sponsors. Thus, given that many people are visual processors, event venues and sponsors alike should incorporate strategically placed visual elements such as logos at the epicenter of action in sporting events, such as near goals, backboards, bases, nets and other places where spectators tend to look in order to improve the likelihood that they visually process the event sponsor.