| Popis: |
The evaluation of sponsorship effectiveness is a major research stream in academic research provided well advances regarding the assessment of sponsorship performance (Cornwell and Maignan 1998; Walliser 2003). However, business practice as expressed in the ANA (2013) study demands more sophisticated sponsorship evaluation approaches that currently incorporate (a) the application of additional measurement instruments, especially from the area of neuromarketing and (b) the analysis of various customer and spectator perspectives, e.g., fan vs. anti-fan in the context of rivalry. With regard to the latter, Madrigal and Dalakas (2008) reviewed that the nature of fan behavior ranges from socially acceptable reactions to negative inappropriate reactions. However, there is only little research explaining how affective dispositions of fans and anti-fans determine the effectiveness of sport sponsorship outcomes such as association transfers from the sponsored entity (e.g., a football team) to the sponsor brand. The sweetness and spiciness of rivalry nurtures media’s and public’s awareness and gets them geared up for an ongoing competitive contest (Stead 2008; Whitson 1998). In the light of the relevance of rivalry as a key element for a high viewer attraction in sports (Kimble and Cooper 1992; Mahony and Moorman 1999) and with reference to Cornwell (2008), the present study partially fills the gap of empirical research in general and empirical evidence in particular related to the measurement of sports sponsorship impact. Particularly, the current research relies on an adapted implicit association test (IAT; Greenwald et al. 1998) from cognitive psychology and widely applied in neuromarketing to better understand consumer’s automatic and spontaneous responses, the so-called implicit processes, to marketing stimuli (e.g., Dimofte 2010: Horcajo et al. 2010). Specifically, the effect of team sponsorship on explicit and implicit brand-related information processing from a fan rivalry perspective is addressed. The empirical results of the presented study suggest that team sponsorship has an impact on implicit and explicit brand information processing. However, a significant positive impact on both dual processes was only revealed within the group of fans, whereas within the group of non-fans only negative implicit and explicit association changes could be identified. In sum, sport spectators’ feelings in terms of affective dispositions toward a sponsored subject or object in a rival competition are of high relevance for the marketing management of the sponsor brand (e.g., Tyler and Cobbs 2015). Particularly, affective dispositions are often related with positive reactions such as favoritism (e.g., Gwinner and Swanson 2003) and a potentially positive association transfer as well as with negative reactions such as aggression (e.g., Wann et al. 2015) which might lead to a negative association transfer. |
