The aggregate of a sport team's fans may be viewed as a consumption community that surrounds the team and its brand (Devasagayam & Buff, 2008; Hickman & Ward, 2007). Beneath this larger consumption umbrella, smaller groups of consumers may exist (Dholakia, Bagozzi, & Pearo, 2004), such as specific supporter groups for a team. Individuals thus may identify with multiple layers of the consumption group simultaneously (Brodsky & Marx, 2001; Hornsey & Hogg, 2000). Although past researchers have studied supporter groups (Giulianotti, 1996, 1999a; Parry & Malcolm, 2004) and consumption communities (Kozinets, 2001; Muñiz & O'Guinn, 2001; McAlexander, Schouten, & Koenig, 2002), there has been limited research on the interaction among subgroups within the superordinate group. The current study examines the American Outlaws (AO), a supporter group for the United States men's national soccer team (USMNT). AO members belong to local AO chapters (subgroups) as well the national (superordinate) group. This structure creates multiple levels of identification and is conducive to studying the phenomenon in question. Through employing a grounded theory methodology, data were collected via participant observation and ethnographic interviews over a two year period. The current study identifies six prominent foci of identification among AO members: the USMNT, the United States of America (national identity), the sport of soccer, AO National, AO Local, and one's small social group. These identities are found to be mutually reinforcing and shape members' interactions with the team, the supporter group, and social groups therein. Specifically, the regional subgroups (AO Local chapters) create opportunities for social interaction, which fosters members' sense of community and group identification. In turn, this strengthens group cohesion at the subgroup and superordinate group levels. Further, supporter group members alter their team consumption experiences by creating places of prolonged identity salience at live games and when watching games on television. These events increase identification with the supporter group and its related identities. For practitioners, implications of this study include the understanding of supporter groups' impact on members' frequency and duration of brand-related consumption.

Over the last decade, both academic and business literatures in marketing have emphasized the importance of customer equity that considers customers as most important company assets. In this hyper-competitive business environment, the need to obtain competitive advantage and retain customers has led to an increased attention to relationship equity, which is one of the three drivers of customer equity and theorized to arise from relational marketing efforts. However, relationship equity theory has received minimal attention in the spectator sport setting. Rather, most focus has been given to identifying factors that drive up customer loyalty and positive market outcomes from the value and brand equity aspects. This research provides a framework for understanding relationship equity and its impact on customer retention and loyalty based on customer equity theory (Rust et al., 2001) in a spectator sport setting. This model suggests some antecedent conditions that lead to relationship equity, which eventually results in customer retention and positive behavioral marketplace outcomes. In order to examine the proposed links in the framework, structural equation modeling (SEM) was run using a sample of season ticket holders of a professional sport team. A survey design was used to empirically investigate this proposed phenomenon within a minor league ice hockey context in the northeastern region of the United States of America. The results support the thesis that relationship equity is important to customer retention and desired marketplace consequences. The study found that four antecedents (benevolence, communication, quality of alternatives and personal investment) are significantly related to relationship equity. Relationship equity fully mediates the relationship between antecedents and all dependent constructs. Affective commitment partially mediates the relationship between relationship equity and behavioral loyalty, thus showing double mediation effects. In addition, the results demonstrate that both the proposed structural model and the alternative model have a similar good overall fit. However, this dissertation adopted the alternative model because the chi-square difference test showed significance between the two models and also because the alternative model identified the double mediating role of relationship equity and affective commitment. Based on the findings, this study recommends that sport managers should primarily focus on creating and maintaining relationship equity in order to achieve customer retention and firm’s profitability.

Advocates of public stadium subsidies claim professional sports teams produce positive production and consumption externalities in a local economy that should manifest themselves through pecuniary increases in incomes, jobs, and taxes or non-pecuniary gains in civic pride and community spirit. Government expenditures may be efficient if either effect is larger than the public sector contribution. A minor league stadium building boom provides an interesting context in which to conduct economic policy research. Based on the unsupported claims of major league teams, minor league baseball team owners also maintain ex ante that new ballparks will increase employment, tax revenues, and other private economic development. Yet, no research has substantiated or refuted these assertions at the minor league level. This dissertation performed two analyses to remedy this gap in the literature. The first measures pecuniary gains using a dynamic panel data model and finds that AAA teams, A+ teams, AA stadiums, and rookie stadiums are all associated with significant gains in local per capita income. The presence of positive effects is strikingly different from decades of non-positive results at the major league level. The second analysis measures non-pecuniary benefits via a hedonic rent equation to determine whether a team is a valuable amenity that increases local quality of life. Affiliated teams are associated with significant increases in rents whereas independent teams are associated with significant decreases in rent. Collectively, the pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits derived from minor league baseball are in excess of the stadium subsidy in markets with AAA teams and rookie stadiums. Only cities with independent teams suffer a loss from the presence of a team. In a more conservative case, actual dollar gains in income tax revenues are sufficient to cover the stadium cost in only 25% of AAA markets and 75% of rookie markets. This research helps inform the current policy debate on public funding for minor league stadiums by evaluating the veracity of claims made by stadium proponents. With hundreds of millions of public dollars spent each year on minor league baseball stadiums, the economic effects of teams on communities have important policy implications.

This study was the outgrowth of a direct need. While the investigator was the director of athletics at a small California junior college, he was responsible for the production, management, and administration of the athletic contests which this college hosted. At that time, new to the field and to the post, he found there were numerous details of which he was completely unaware when preparing for contests in the various sports. Even in the sports with which he was most familiar, details materialized at contest time that had not been anticipated. In conferring with other directors of athletics who did not have a great depth of experiences, it was observed that they had the same problems.

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Accessing and exploiting organizational resources plays an integral role in not only a firm’s propensity to achieve a competitive advantage, but also its mere survival in a competitive environment (Ulrich & Barney, 1984). One of the most common means of resource acquisition for both large administrative firms and smaller entrepreneurial enterprises is interorganizational alliances (Ireland, Hitt, & Vaidyanath, 2002). Utilizing the resource-based view of the firm within a strategic alliance framework, this dissertation examines a particular type of interorganizational exchange relationship permeating the marketing discipline. The promotional alliance is defined within this research as a strategic alliance based on resource exchange between a promoting enterprise and a firm seeking to fulfill promotion-based objectives through an ongoing collaboration with the enterprise. Each of the two sides of the promotional alliance relationship served as a focus for one of the two studies presented within this work. In the first study, a longitudinal survival model was employed to investigate the dependency of a promotional enterprise on external resource acquisition via alliances with promotion-seeking firms. Also at issue were the heterogeneity of resources accessed and the dynamics of the institutional forces regulating such alliances. Alliances with sponsoring firms offering financial and performance-based resources, as opposed to operational resources, were found to have a significant influence on the survival of sponsored enterprises. However, these dependencies were subject to changes in institutional support and the potential for diminishing returns. The second study approached promotional alliances from the perspective of the firms seeking promotion. Relying on the theory of efficient capital markets (Fama, 1970), an event study analysis was undertaken to determine the impact of internationally prominent promotional alliance announcements on the equity value of the sponsoring firms, which theoretically reflects investors’ expectations of future cash flows. Contrary to prior research, the initiation of these alliances demonstrated a negative impact on shareholder value. Several alliance, firm, and promoting partner characteristics were hypothesized to influence alliance outcomes to varying degrees within the cross-sectional sample of promotion-seeking firms. Surprisingly, only the magnitude of the sponsoring firm’s alliance investment and the nationality congruence within the alliance were influential in predicting investors’ reaction to such alliances. Each study was embedded within the institutional context of Formula One (F1) motor racing and focused on the promotional alliances involving corporate partners (sponsoring firms) and their affiliated racing teams. In this context, the racing teams acted as the promoting enterprises charged with providing the marketing platform to meet their sponsoring firms’ objectives. With annual races on four or more continents; a global television audience rivaled only by the Olympics’ opening ceremony, FIFA World Cup finals, and the NFL’s Super Bowl; direct competition between promoting teams; and sponsoring firms hailing from fifteen different nations and over twenty diverse industry sectors; F1 provided an ideal setting for the evaluation of interorganizational alliances’ impact on the survival of promoting enterprises and a promotion-seeking firm’s value implications. To compliment and strengthen the applied contribution of both studies, the analyzed results were subjected to a discussion with industry experts representing both sides of the promotional alliance relationship (Lane & Jacobson, 1995). Not only did this closing analysis reinforce the relevance of the research offered here, but it also presented a practitioner-focused examination of the industry challenges inherent in the theoretical tenets underlying such research.

The aim of the research is to evaluate how professional sport organizations communicate via social media and lay groundwork on how to effectively do so in the future. The research focuses on the history of social media and its involvement in sport, how it's used today, examples of effective communication and how it can eventually drive revenue for a sport franchise and build a stronger fan base at the same time.

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