Magister Commercii - MCom / In South Africa today those who lead sport are facing increasing scrutiny which has inevitably resulted in questioning governance practices. The transition of many sports from predominantly volunteer administered organizations anchored in an amateur ethos, to professionally managed entities catering to a more sophisticated market place has created unique challenges for the governance of sport sponsorship. This evolution gives rise to possible conceptual linkage between sport sponsorship and corporate governance or none thereof. This study focuses on the ABSA-Premier Soccer League (PSL) sponsorship transaction as a case study to explore this linkage. The research is aimed at finding the nexus between sport sponsorship and corporate governance principles, namely accountability and transparency in the conclusion of this transaction.The research consists of four phases; literature review which provides a detailed analysis of all primary and secondary material available on this topic. The second phase is a qualitative case study research methodology which comprises of in-depth interviews with targeted stakeholders. The third part presents the research findings and discussion section, and lastly the way forward through reflections and recommendations including highlighting potential future research areas. This work is timely when there has been generally a heightened evolution in sport sponsorship and its focus was to explore the nexus and compliance to the founding principles of the organizations (laws of governance). Factually, good corporate governance aims at ensuring a higher degree of transparency in an organization by encouraging full disclosure of transactions in the company accounts as well as accountability. Academics have been exploring the notion of sports sponsorship and corporate governance with much of the debates grounded on understanding its commercial value.The focus for this study is on the conceptual nexus or non-thereof, between sponsorship and corporate governance. Information was collected through in-depth and experience interviews,documented reviews and analysis (such as the review and analysis of the constitution of the South Africa football Association, PSL, financial/banking sector policy regulations, South African Sports Act, corporate governance reports, annual reports, scholarly journals,academic books, conference papers and Parliamentary Monitoring Group documents etc. to mention but a few.

Numerous not-for-profit organizations are developing and implementing social marketing programs that aim to address important social issues. Sponsorship has become an important tool to obtain necessary funds to run these programs. However, in today’s competitive environment, organizations have to compete for very limited sponsorship opportunities. To maintain and improve sponsorship relationships, organizations need to be able to evaluate sponsorships using efficient, proven methods. Thus, evaluation of social marketing sponsorship becomes an important component for both scholars and practitioners. However, this area still remains largely under-researched, especially in an empirical setting. This thesis fills this gap by evaluating Coca-Cola Canada sponsorship of the ParticipACTION Teen Challenge program. The results indicate that partners in sponsorship have successfully achieved their shared social marketing objectives by collaborating positively in delivering the program and by creating opportunities for participants to benefit from the program. The research highlights main factors that impact effective sponsorship implementation and evaluation.

Background: In recent years, sponsorship has become an important and heavily implemented marketing communications tool, and the significance of sponsorship is especially seen within the context of sports. Despite the heavy implementation of sponsorship, both in a team context and on an individual level, existing sponsorship literature has been strongly focused on sponsorship in a team context, thus neglecting the individual aspect of sponsorship. Furthermore, previous literature has highlighted the importance of implementing clear objectives into the overall strategic marketing plan to respond to difficulties in tracing and evaluating sponsorship. The lack of existing literature on individual sponsorship and the need for clear objectives raises questions about managerial motivations behind the implementation of sponsorship. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the underlying managerial motivations behind the implementation of individual sponsorship in outdoor recreation businesses in Sweden. In doing so, this study aims to reduce existing literature gaps within sponsorship. Method: A qualitative collective case study with an abductive approach was conducted utilizing semi- structured interviews with 5 relevant participants who are working in outdoor recreation brands within the Swedish market. Conclusion: Findings of this study revealed that building credibility through the use of individual sponsorship was found to be a highly desired outcome, and strong motivation behind implementation. By transferring meaning, such as credibility, from well known and2  trusted athletes to the brand through associations, the brand in question wished to achieve increased strength of communicated brand messages. The development and strengthening of the brand community was identified as another key motivation behind individual sponsorship. Through the use of individual athletes' mix of properties such as performance, social ability, and own network was believed to strengthen brand community. Another finding was the motivation to achieve brand awareness-through high media exposure using leveraging as a tool. Lastly, the research found that except for implementing sponsored athletes in the marketing activities, utilizing the athletes in the product development process was the motivation behind implementation of individual sponsorship.

One of the major challenges facing cricket unions today is getting adequate funding; on the other hand, one of the challenges facing businesses are the hundreds of unsolicited sponsorship proposals they receive annually. This study investigated the business decision-making process for selecting sponsorship proposals, specifically to contribute to the cricket unions’ understanding of the formal selection process that the sponsorship proposal goes through. The primary objective of the study was to determine the degree to which businesses follow the decision-making process when selecting a sponsorship opportunity. The research study was based on a descriptive research design. First, a theoretical discussion of sponsorship within the marketing communication mix was conducted to illustrate that a sponsorship is a product that the business must purchase, and therefore they use the decision-making process to choose among different sponsorship opportunities. The business decision-making process was discussed in further detail for selecting sponsorship proposals. Primary data was collected by means of a web-based questionnaire. A convenience sample was used to distribute the questionnaire to sponsors of the sixteen cricket unions in South Africa. The nature of a sponsorship relationship is rather sensitive; therefore a complete list of all the sponsors could not be compiled. A total of 39 respondents participated in the study. The sample was not representative, and therefore the results are only valid for those respondents who participated in the study. The results indicated that respondents were most likely to set product/brand/service objectives and media objectives for their sponsorships. All the sponsorship objectives are equally important to the respondents from the medium and large sponsors, except for guest hospitality objectives which are deemed more important by large sponsors than the respondents from medium sponsors. With regard to decision-making criteria, respondents found positioning/image criteria as very important during a sponsorship decision. The role-players identified by the respondents who most frequently participate in the decision-making process are the marketing manager, public relations manager, CEO or owner. With regard to the degree to which businesses follow the decisionmaking process, it was found that large sponsors are more likely to follow a fairly formal evaluation process than medium sponsors. It is recommended that cricket unions need to focus on the decision-making criteria and objectives that are deemed important by sponsors, and that they should also include these aspects in their sponsorship proposals. With regard to medium and large sponsors, cricket unions should focus on providing large sponsors with more guest hospitality opportunities; they must also prepare their proposals for a formal decision-making process as compared the less formal approach followed by medium sponsors when reviewing sponsorship applications. Recommendations for future research include that a similar study should be conducted with a large sample size, to be able to identify if statistical significant differences do exist for different size sponsors. A probability sample should be used, to be able to obtain data that is representative of the entire population. The limitations of the study, such as financial and time constraints, prevented from achieving all the recommendations for future research set out above. / Thesis (M.Com. (Marketing Management))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012

Sponsored activities can conduct an effective communication channel between the enterprise and its targeted customers, and among all kind of sponsored activities, sports sponsorship is the most popular one. Enterprise always hope to successfully lift up the brand¡¦s awareness and image all over the world by sponsoring a big sport event. However, whether the enterprise can benefit from the sponsorship is the main thing enterprise really caring about after throwing big bucks and efforts, and it is also the focus of this study. We take the Acer as our targeted enterprise, and examine the sponsorship effect of two different sport events that Acer sponsor (We pretend that Acer sponsoring the 2010 World Cup). The data were collected through a questionnaire. This study totally sent out three hundreds and ten questionnaires, two hundreds and ninety-six questionnaires were received, two hundreds and seventy-nine of them were effective. The results suggest that when consumers have positive attitude toward the sport events, the enterprises can enhance the awareness through sponsoring the sport events. But it is uncertain whether the enterprise can enhance the image by sponsoring the sport events when consumers have positive attitude toward the sport events. The results also suggest that the consumers¡¦ perception of sponsor-event fit will affect the awareness and image. Moreover, the study indicate that both the awareness and image have significantly positive effects on purchase intention.

Βασικό αντικείμενο της παρούσας μελέτης είναι η μέτρηση των οφελών της αθλητικής χορηγίας, η οποία αποτελεί σήμερα μία από τις πιο διαδεδομένες μεθόδους επικοινωνίας μάρκετινγκ για τις επιχειρήσεις παγκοσμίως. Οι κύριες διαστάσεις της υπεραξίας της μάρκας («πιστότητα στη μάρκα», «αντιληπτή ποιότητα της μάρκας», «αναγνωρισιμότητα και συσχετισμοί της μάρκας») συμπεριλαμβάνονται στους στόχους της εργασίας και εξετάζονται σε συνάρτηση με την έννοια της «εναρμόνισης (fit) του χορηγού με το γεγονός». Το εμπειρικό μέρος ασχολείται με τη χορηγία της εταιρείας τηλεπικοινωνιών WIND στον 31ο Κλασικό Μαραθώνιο της Αθήνας (Νοέμβριος 2013) και εστιάζει τόσο στην εκτίμηση των οφελών όσο και στη διαφοροποίηση αυτών ανάμεσα σε τρεις ομάδες-στόχους (εθελοντές, δρομείς και θεατές). Η συλλογή δεδομένων πραγματοποιήθηκε με τη χρήση προσωπικού ερωτηματολογίου που συμπληρώθηκε από 420 ερωτώμενους ισότιμα κατανεμημένους στις τρεις ομάδες. Στα κυριότερα συμπεράσματα της έρευνας συμπεριλαμβάνονται η θετική αλληλεπίδραση της «εναρμόνισης» (fit) με τη «στάση προς το χορηγό» και με την «πρόθεση αγοράς των προϊόντων του» για τα επιμέρους δείγματα, καθώς επίσης και η διαφοροποίηση του βαθμού πρόβλεψης της «στάσης προς το χορηγό», της «πιστότητας στη μάρκα» και της «πρόθεσης αγοράς των προϊόντων του χορηγού» από τις υπόλοιπες εξεταζόμενες μεταβλητές, ανάμεσα στις επιμέρους ομάδες. / The main aim of the present study refers to the quantitative measurement of sport sponsorship’s benefits, which constitutes today one of the most popular marketing’s communication tools for businesses worldwide. Basic dimensions of brand equity (brand loyalty, perceived quality of brand, brand awareness and associations) are included in the objectives of the study and examined in terms of congruence (fit) between the sponsor and the event. The empirical part of the study is conducted upon WIND’s sponsorship on the 31st Classic Marathon of Athens (November 2013) and focuses both on the evaluation of benefits and the differentiation between three target-markets (volunteers, athletes, spectators). Data collection was carried through the administration of questionnaires among 420 respondents, equally spread across the three samples. The findings of the research show the positive interaction between event-sponsor fit and the attitude toward the sponsor, as well as the sponsorship-linked purchase intention, among the three groups of the sample. Moreover, another interesting conclusion of the research is the differentiation of the extent to which brand attitude, brand loyalty and sponsorship-linked purchase intention are affected by the examined equity variables, among the three group samples.

One of the major challenges facing cricket unions today is getting adequate funding; on the other hand, one of the challenges facing businesses are the hundreds of unsolicited sponsorship proposals they receive annually. This study investigated the business decision-making process for selecting sponsorship proposals, specifically to contribute to the cricket unions’ understanding of the formal selection process that the sponsorship proposal goes through. The primary objective of the study was to determine the degree to which businesses follow the decision-making process when selecting a sponsorship opportunity. The research study was based on a descriptive research design. First, a theoretical discussion of sponsorship within the marketing communication mix was conducted to illustrate that a sponsorship is a product that the business must purchase, and therefore they use the decision-making process to choose among different sponsorship opportunities. The business decision-making process was discussed in further detail for selecting sponsorship proposals. Primary data was collected by means of a web-based questionnaire. A convenience sample was used to distribute the questionnaire to sponsors of the sixteen cricket unions in South Africa. The nature of a sponsorship relationship is rather sensitive; therefore a complete list of all the sponsors could not be compiled. A total of 39 respondents participated in the study. The sample was not representative, and therefore the results are only valid for those respondents who participated in the study. The results indicated that respondents were most likely to set product/brand/service objectives and media objectives for their sponsorships. All the sponsorship objectives are equally important to the respondents from the medium and large sponsors, except for guest hospitality objectives which are deemed more important by large sponsors than the respondents from medium sponsors. With regard to decision-making criteria, respondents found positioning/image criteria as very important during a sponsorship decision. The role-players identified by the respondents who most frequently participate in the decision-making process are the marketing manager, public relations manager, CEO or owner. With regard to the degree to which businesses follow the decisionmaking process, it was found that large sponsors are more likely to follow a fairly formal evaluation process than medium sponsors. It is recommended that cricket unions need to focus on the decision-making criteria and objectives that are deemed important by sponsors, and that they should also include these aspects in their sponsorship proposals. With regard to medium and large sponsors, cricket unions should focus on providing large sponsors with more guest hospitality opportunities; they must also prepare their proposals for a formal decision-making process as compared the less formal approach followed by medium sponsors when reviewing sponsorship applications. Recommendations for future research include that a similar study should be conducted with a large sample size, to be able to identify if statistical significant differences do exist for different size sponsors. A probability sample should be used, to be able to obtain data that is representative of the entire population. The limitations of the study, such as financial and time constraints, prevented from achieving all the recommendations for future research set out above. / Thesis (M.Com. (Marketing Management))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Commerce, 2002. / Bibliography: leaves 231-291.

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 1999. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 78 p. : ill. (some col.). Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 66-68).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xiv, 116 p.; also includes graphics (some col.). Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-116). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center