Background: Nowadays, football is much more than just a sport. In fact, football is a global industry contributing to many countries’ economic and social wealth. Football leagues are deeply involved in globalization processes and follow international marketing strategies while aiming for growth in foreign markets. In that context, it is essential for any football league to know its brand equity and the interest in the league in the desired market, to be able to make strategic decisions which lead to internationalization and marketing management success. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the Brand Equity of the Bundesliga including Brand Interest. The current research extends Shuv-Ami's (2016a) market brand equity model within sport organizations with Machleit et al.'s (1990) concept of brand interest and is applied to the Bundesliga in the Swedish market. Research Question: What is the perceived Brand Equity including Brand Interest of the Bundesliga in Sweden? Methodology: The chosen approach for this study was a deductive approach with a theory and context extension of Shuv-Ami's (2016a) market brand equity model. A quantitative data collection through online survey was conducted and collected 805 survey answers from Swedish football fans which were used for the analysis. Conclusion: The findings showed that the perceived Brand Equity including the brand interest of the Bundesliga in Sweden was very positive. The Bundesliga was especially highly ranked in terms of Brand Knowledge, Brand Image, Brand Personality, Brand Satisfaction, and Brand Interest. Further, the proposed Brand Equity model including Brand Interest as a new variable has been successfully confirmed by this study as Brand Interest had been identified as a significant contributor to Brand Equity. Keywords: Brand Equity, Brand Interest, Bundesliga, Sports Marketing, Football, Brand Equity of a Football League, Football Marketing.

Cette thèse étudie le rôle de la religion et du scepticisme vis-à-vis de la publicité dans l’évaluation par les consommateurs de visuels publicitaires sexuellement choquants. L’étude qualitative 1 a pour objectif d’explorer les questions éthiques et culturelles contribuant au développement du scepticisme envers publicités sexuellement choquantes. La méthodologie choisie s’est composé 22 entretiens semi-directifs auprès de consommateurs indonésiens. Les publicités à contenu sexuel choquant sont perçues comme trompeuses et irritantes et que les consommateurs développent fréquemment une forme de scepticisme face à ces visuels. L’étude qualitative 2, une netnographie montrent que les consommateurs ont la capacité de juger le motif de l'utilisation du contenu sexuel créé par le marketing que nous avons identifié comme le symptôme du scepticisme publicitaire. Enfin, l’étude quantitative a poursuivi une méthode quasi-expérimentale afin d’étudier le rôle du scepticisme, de la religiosité et des exécutions publicitaires sur les réactions des consommateurs envers les publicités sexuellement choquantes et les conséquences pour la marque. 1024 réponses de consommateurs indonésiens ont été recueillies au moyen de questionnaires en ligne. Les sceptiques expriment non seulement une attitude négative envers les publicités, ils sont aussi moins intéressés par la marque qui est mise en avant. Les résultats suggèrent également que les facteurs de religiosité influencent l'effet d’exécution de la publicité (congruence de publicité) sur l’irritation perçue, l’attitude envers la publicité, et l’embarras ressenti. / This doctoral thesis aims to understand the role of religion and advertising skepticism in shaping consumers’ perspective and behavior regarding sexually appealing advertising. The first qualitative study explores the ethical and cultural issues regarding sexually appealing advertising with 22 semi-structured interviews among Indonesian consumers. Results show that sexually appealing advertising is perceived as deceptive and irritating and that ad skepticism is a frequent response to the excessive use of sexual content in ads. The second qualitative study is a netnography which aims to better understand the characteristics of skepticism toward sexually appealing ads and identify its consequences on consumers’ attitude and behavior. Results show that consumers have the capability to judge the motive behind the use of sexual content created by the marketer that we identified as the symptom of the ad skepticism. Finally, the quantitative study was performed with a quasi-experiment method in order to investigate the role of skepticism toward sexually appealing advertising, religiosity, and advertising executions on consumers’ ad reactions and brand consequence. 1024 responses from Indonesian samples were collected through web-based questionnaires. The skeptics not only express the negative attitude toward the ads, they are also less interested in the brand being advertised. Results also suggest that religiosity influence the effect of ad-execution construct (i.e. ad congruity) on perceived ad irritation, attitude toward the ad, and embarrassment.