As sport sponsorship has grown in importance and sophistication over the past three decades, so too have the efforts made by un-associated brands to capitalize on the financial benefits and media value provided by sport. By offering would-be sponsors an alternative means of associating with an event without the substantial expense of securing an official partnership, ambush marketing has become a major threat to the investments made by official sponsors, cluttering the marketing environment surrounding sponsorship and challenging sponsors for consumer attention and awareness. Unfortunately, our understanding of ambushing and its impact on the management of sponsorship programmes has been limited by the predominantly atheoretical, outdated perspective of ambush marketing espoused by commercial rights holders and event organizers. This study presents a conceptual examination of ambush marketing, providing a theoretical investigation of the nature, role, strategy and impact of ambush marketing and a renewed perspective of ambush marketing as a form of marketing communications. Contemporary ambush marketing represents a strategic alternative to official sponsorship, which offers a brand access to consumer attention and awareness by creating an affiliation, whether implicit or explicit, with an event or property. This previously unexplored complexity and diversity has informed the construction and development of a typology of ambush strategy which contemporizes past ambush marketing research and affords new insight into the role and evolution of ambush marketing, and its impact on sport sponsorship management. The development of a theoretical conceptualization of ambush marketing represents an integral step in the advancement of the academic study of ambushing, and affords the opportunity to better understand the impact of ambushing on sponsorship and to further explore the nature of ambush marketing.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-132). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-132). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file as well as 10 media.jpg files. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on November 12, 2008) Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2004. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 39-41).

Thesis (M.A.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of Advertising, Public Relations, and Retailing, 2008. / "Committee members: Dr. Keith Adler, Dr. Constantinos Coursaris, and Dr. Mira Lee"--Acknowledgments. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Aug. 6, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 58-61). Also issued in print.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, March, 2010. / Title from PDF t.p. Release of full electronic text on OhioLINK has been delayed until April 1, 2015. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

The ability to target consumer segments and achieve a match between the product or promotional instrument and the consumer self-concept is stressed in the marketing literature. The online quality of a website has been said to have a positive impact on intention to use a website and perform a search, with preference for a website linked to perceptions of its credibility. Website preferences cam also encourage or discourage consumers’ purchasing intentions and the perceived visual attractiveness of a website is said to have a greater impact on e-loyalty and consumer retention than traditional attributes such as product selection and price. The important impact of preferences necessitates an understanding of the factors in a website that can appeal or not to people. Unfortunately, until as recently as 2004, studies investigating website aesthetics were anchored in the universalist paradigm which assumed that reactions would be universally held rather than differentiated according to demographic variables. A Canadian study in 2005 documented differences in reaction by gender but this study was inadequate in using a single commercial stimulus which had not been selected on any particular basis. Prior to this, research on web aesthetics was rooted in the universalist aesthetic in assuming that a single set of factors would suit all tastes. The overview describes the work by the author to ascertain the extent to which website productions differ by segmentation variables and the extent to which preferences can also be segmented. The author’s work has isolated the impact of segmentation variables (gender, personality and nationality) on website productions and of gender on website preferences and the overview focuses on gender since the impact of this variable has been explored in relation to productions and preferences.

This study examines the types of and frequency with which computer-mediated communications (CMC) services are used by international public relations (PR) specialists for advertising and information gathering and the judged effectiveness of these services. International PR specialists were surveyed to identify the types of and frequency with which CMC services were used for advertising and information gathering. Services focused on World Wide Web (V./WW) pages, electronic mail (e-mail), Internet search engines, and large commercial on-line services. This study also focused on: the use of the Internet for advertising, the judged effectiveness of using CMC for information gathering, the possible differences in the use of CMC between PR specialists from small large firms and a comparison of judged effectiveness based on firm size. A summary of CMC services was included to provide background information. The results indicated fairly high usage for information gathering and a lack of agreement regarding the effectiveness of CMC for advertising. No significant differences of type or frequency of usage were found when comparing small firms and large firms.