Sten Söderman

Strategic sponsoring in professional sport:a review and conceptualization

Research question: While the literature on sponsorship of sport has gained interest among scholars in diverse fields such as management, marketing, and psychology in recent years, scant attention has been paid to the extent in which sponsoring may serve as a strategic lever that is mutually beneficial for sponsors and sponsees. We, therefore, ask: What constitutes strategic sponsoring in professional sport? Research methods: In addressing our research question, we selectively review the literature on sport sponsoring, link it to the basic tenets of the resource-based view, and conceptualize this literature into a framework for strategic sponsoring in professional sport. Results and findings: In developing our framework, we consider the concept of regime as the key defining working principle of strategic sponsorship activities. We then elicit six different regimes: the cause regime, loyalty regime, appropriability regime, value-differential regime, heuristics-based regime, and associational regime. Each one of these regime types is further related to the six sponsorship activities identified in our literature review. Implications: In proposing how various regimes serve as generative mechanisms for altering the resource and knowledge-bases of sponsors and sponsees, we provide a conceptually rigorous framework of strategic sponsoring that expands the limits of extant views of sport sponsorship. Hence, our multilevel framework advances sponsorship theory through a more rigorous framing, and it provides practitioners clues for rethinking their sponsorship programs.

The network of value captures in football club management : a framework to develop and analyse competitive advantage in professional team sports

Soderman and Dolles have assembled an impressive array of researchers to address the nexus between sport and business. In their rich collection of research on sport business theory and practice Sod ...The network of value captures in football club management : a framework to develop and analyse competitive advantage in professional team sports

Handbook of Research on Sport and Business

Soderman and Dolles have assembled an impressive array of researchers to address the nexus between sport and business. In their rich collection of research on sport business theory and practice Sod ...The network of value captures in football club management : a framework to develop and analyse competitive advantage in professional team sports

International strategic management hybrids in China

PurposeA comparative conceptual framework is established to analyze hybrids of Western and Chinese strategic management types, where the foundation is an institutional strategic management theory.D ...

Branding and governance in sports : Best papers from the “Managing Sport” tracks at the EURAM Annual Meeting in Istanbul 2013

Branding and governance in sports : Best papers from the “Managing Sport” tracks at the EURAM Annual Meeting in Istanbul 2013

Twenty years of development of the J-League: analysing the business parameters of professional football in Japan.

By considering the implementation, as well as the immediate and sustainable success of the Japanese professional soccer (hence: football) league (J-League) during its first two decades as a neglected research example, we apply the ‘network of value captures’ research framework to the Japanese context. This research framework identifies and describes the business parameters of professional football by the following dimensions: (1) the product and its features; (2) various customer groups; and (3) the future vision of the club as central to different levels of strategy aggregation. The outcome of this research provides insight into the management of football in Japan by revealing different practices compared to Europe e.g. in target customer groups, in associated product marketing and merchandizing and in distribution of media revenues. The success story of the J-League also contributes to an increasing international awareness of Japanese football, its players and its fans.

Research on Sport as a Business

The purpose of the handbook is to present the current frontier of research on sport and business in theory and in practice. It is designed to function as a catalyst for building and disseminating new ideas around the variety of methods being applied in research on the business aspects of sports as well as of sport-related industries. It shall be read and used by academics, Ph.D. students as well as sports practitioners looking for useful ways of expanding knowledge, conducting research or searching for insights into the challenges of managing sport. We have also attempted to make the handbook useful and accessible to masters and bachelor students who prepare their thesis projects. Although such students will normally be expected to complete their thesis projects in months rather than years, they face the same problems of finding a thesis topic, how to design their research project, the choice of appropriate methods and summarizing their findings as analysed and demonstrated in the chapters in this handbook. The introduction will explain in the following how and why this handbook is structured in thematic clusters, will present some of our thoughts and observations on cross-links between the research methods and chapter topics by introducing the chapters.

The network of value captures in football club management: A framework to develop and analyze competitive advantage in professional team sports

Soderman and Dolles have assembled an impressive array of researchers to address the nexus between sport and business. In their rich collection of research on sport business theory and practice Sod ...The network of value captures in football club management : a framework to develop and analyse competitive advantage in professional team sports

Learning from Success: Implementing a Professional Football League in Japan

The transformation of football (or ‘soccer’ in the American context) into a global sport has several dimensions. These include: the migration of elite football talent, such as players and coaches, and the subsequent support of their fans, between nations, as well as within and between continents; the design and manufacturing of clothing, footwear and equipment for football professionals, amateurs and fans which forms a worldwide industry built on the branding of sports and merchandizing goods; the integration of new media technologies and the use of multiple new media platforms regarding the global transfer of images, information and messages produced and distributed by newspapers, magazines, radio, film, television, video, satellite, cable and the internet; and finally, the ideological dimension of the transfer of values centrally associated with football and its governing institutions. The declaration of the Japanese Football Association (JFA) exemplifies these multiple dimensions: “Through football, we realise the full benefits that sports can bring to our lives — the soundness of our bodies, the expansion of our minds, and the enrichment of our societies.”1

Storytelling, electronic word of mouth and social media - On the changing communication landscape

This paper aims to explain how storytelling becomes interlinked with social media and the conceptual consequences this development implies. In recent years the interest in storytelling has increase ...