Idag finns det ett omfattande reklam- och mediebrus i samhället där marknadschefer försöker hitta den mest unika vägen för att få allmänheten att bli intresserade av just deras varumärke. Teorier visar att företag som medverkar i ett event genom kommunikationsmetoderna sponsring eller event marketing erhåller en ökad trovärdighet och stärker sitt varumärke. Hur medvetna är då företagets marknadschefer om skillnaden mellan sponsring och event marketing för att stärka sitt varumärke? Syftet med den här studien är att kartlägga nio marknadschefers medvetenhet mellan sponsring och event marketing i samband med ett idrottsevent. Studien är av kvalitativ art och har ett deduktivt angreppssätt för att besvara problemformuleringen om hur medvetna marknadschefer är om skillnaden mellan sponsring och event marketing när de är associerade med ett idrottsevent och önskar nå en förbättrad image och medvetenhet kring sitt varumärke. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att de nio intervjuade marknadscheferna är medvetna om skillnaden mellan sponsring och event marketing. De anser även att event marketing genererar ett starkare mervärde än vad sponsring gör. Dock är det tid- och resursmöjligheter som begränsar dem från att arbeta med event marketing i den omfattning de önskar.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to provide a holistic understanding of how Facebook is used by professional team sport organizations to strengthen customer based-brand equity and how these attempts are perceived by the customers with a focus on the derived benefits. Frame of reference: Customer-based brand equity is conceptualized, modified and employed to the realm of Facebook. Moreover, a communication model is modified in order to link marketing communications in a hypermedia environment with customer-based brand equity.  Methodology: An abductive approach is chosen and a collective case study applied as research strategy. The selected cases are Manchester United and Arsenal London. Firstly, quantitative content analysis is used to analyze the Facebook pages of both cases. Secondly, eleven semi-structured interviews are conducted to understand the customer’s perception of and values associated with the respective club’s Facebook page. Conclusions: The findings of this thesis show that a firm’s usage of Facebook as a medium of communication can strengthen customer-based brand equity. While in both cases most Facebook content evolves around product related posts, it is found that the clubs communicate slightly different. Arsenal posts significantly more non-product related content involving fans than ManU. The communication tool that is most intensively used by both organizations is the link, forwarding users to the official website. The identified benefits on behalf of the interviewees embrace fan identification and peer-group acceptance as well as socializing/companionship, emotions and entertainment. Visuals have been identified as important among the sample. Customers strongly value content that evolves around non-product related posts that focus on fans, while fan integration is generally demanded in a more qualitative manner

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.

While the volume of research on corporate event sponsorships as a marketing tool has increased markedly over the past decade, the results have done little to help marketers to justify sponsorship spending. Not only do marketers have little knowledge of a sponsored event’s financial return, they also struggle to demonstrate any impact on consumer behavior at all. Using multi-wave survey data, we quantified the financial impact of a sponsorship. We predicted the number of new buyers based upon changed brand attitudes, consistent with a hierarchy of effects model. We then established the financial return on the sponsorship spending by estimating the customer lifetime value (CLV) of these new buyers. We collected the data around a major college football bowl game. Six phases of data collection were used to determine purchasing behavior and brand attitudes of attendees before and after the sponsored event, in comparison to television viewers of the event and the general public. We applied Lavidge and Elrick’s (1961) attitudinal constructs as the independent variables in a logistic regression to predict future purchase. The final data collection was used to validate the model’s prediction. The findings show that the model accurately predicted the number of new customers after one buying cycle for the sponsor’s products. We also quantified the positive impact of the sponsorship on the CLV of existing customers within the same time frame. The managerial implications of this study are significant. Sponsorships are highly risky, with fixed outlays up front, and unclear benefits to be realized in the future. We provide a methodology that not only allows sponsors to measure the effectiveness of the sponsorship, but to determine the return on their sponsorship investment. We have taken consumer behavior theory from marketing communications research and combined it with CLV tools, thus allowing marketers to determine the number of new customers that a sponsorship generates, as well as how it influences the buying patterns that drive customer lifetime value.

A presente dissertação estudou o comportamento do consumidor esportivo, mais especificamente o consumidor de produtos ligados ao futebol, torcedores de Corinthians, São Paulo e Palmeiras. Após um referencial teórico que buscou as principais teorias de comportamento do consumidor e apontou as especificidades do mercado futebolístico, os resultados apontaram que os consumidores têm preferência por alguns atributos como a marca e a durabilidade do produto, em detrimento da distribuição e comunicação, que da forma como são feitas hoje não possuem importância significativa junto ao mesmo. A pesquisa ainda relatou que o consumidor tem dificuldade em identificar o produto licenciado em relação ao pirata e que quando a escolha é feita para presente e não para utilização própria, o produto licenciado tem uma participação maior na escolha. / This dissertation studied the behavior of the sport\'s consumers, more specifically the consumer products linked to football fans of Corinthians, Palmeiras and São Paulo. After a theoretical framework that sought the main theories of consumer behavior and pointed out the specifics of the football market, the results showed that consumers have a preference for certain attributes such as brand and product durability at the expense of distribution and communication, so that the how they are made today do not have significant importance next to it. The survey also reported that consumers have difficulty identifying the licensed product relative to the pirate and that when the choice is made for this and not for their own use, the licensed product has a larger share in the choice.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect gender bias has in sports and howmarketing can be used to challenge gender bias. Design/methodology/approach – This paper will use data collected from 188 surveys from registered fans of the Linköping Hockey Club. Findings – This paper targets why female ice hockey is not as popular as male ice hockey. Theories such as marketing mix are used to identify the differences and similarities between thetwo teams as if they were products. Practical implications – Sports leagues and clubs with male and female teams could use the results to limit gender bias against women in sports. Originality/value – This will help limit gender bias through a marketing perspective, by specifically addressing gender bias in sports marketing.

D.Comm. (Sport Management) / The primary objective of the study was to establish what brand leverage strategies could be implemented in sport mega-event branding based on the case study of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa. The secondary objectives focused on discovering the dimensions of sport mega-event branding, investigating the areas of sport mega-event impacts and leverage, identifying sport mega-event brand leverage activation tools and understanding the role of mega-event brand leverage activation tools in the context of their potential influence on the development of small and medium enterprises in the host country. Deriving from the research questions and objectives, a theoretical framework of sport mega-event brand leverage was created. It provided a blueprint for seven hypotheses, formulated in this study. A quantitative descriptive design was employed by the researcher. A self-administered web based questionnaire was uploaded at the Statkon website at the University of Johannesburg. The researcher utilised a purposive judgement sampling technique which targeted small and medium enterprises (SMEs) from the Gauteng and Western Cape provinces in South Africa. The companies were registered on four major online databases in South Africa – The Box, BizConnect, BizNetwork and online Yellow Pages. The main study was preceded by a two-phase pilot where five individuals representing conveniently chosen SMEs located in the city of Johannesburg filled out a hard copy of the questionnaire in each phase. Once the researcher refined the questions following the second pilot, the main research took place. The total of 8 902 emails, containing the website link, were sent out with 239 returned questionnaires accepted as valid to be included in the statistical analysis (2,95% response rate). The questionnaire was available online for five months between July and November 2011. The researcher made use of factor analysis and the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) in the process of data analysis. The exploratory factor analysis enabled a reduction in the total number of latent variables (factors). It was followed by the confirmatory factor analysis, which also computed the goodness-of-fit indices allowing for establishing how well the model explained the data. Once the number of factors were reduced, the EQuationS (EQS) software was used to investigate mutual relationships between different variables and testing the hypotheses. The summary statistics, such as mean, median and standard deviation also helped in the interpretation of the findings. The main finding of the research was that the destination brand (South Africa) was a significant predictor of co-branding and an integral element of the sport mega-event branding (2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa). Co-branding was identified as the main brand leverage strategy – although there were various ancillary events supporting the World Cup. Ultimately the leverage opportunities lay in South Africa co-building the strong 2010 FIFA World Cup brand. In that, South Africa was one of the two dimensions of the mega-event branding which involved event and destination brands. The impact of social and political areas was identified as the most relevant to consider when staging a sport mega-event. In consequence they should be considered by destination brand managers and sport mega-event governing bodies when planning for leverage. Further analysis revealed that national identity and international prestige were found to have been considered as the most valuable areas of mega-event brand leverage in 2010. Close associations between national identity and prestige suggested that achieving one would have an influence on the other. Respondents thought that the aspects related to national identity should be included in marketing communications associated with the mega-event, such as advertising, public relations, sponsorship and licensing. Meanwhile, strengthening of a country’s international prestige should be anticipated when establishing the public relations strategy. In addition, sponsorship and relationship marketing were viewed as potentially having a significant influence on the development of local SMEs while licensing was seen as a solution with the power to boost SMEs growth in the short-term. This suggested that sponsors and other stakeholders should be involved in planning for positive event outcomes from a point of view of a local SME. This research had four main limitations which could not make the findings relevant to the broader population. Those limitations were: the low response rate, specific characteristics of hosting nation South Africa, as well as the fact that the World Cup is the most popular sporting event in the world. In addition, the sample population was limited to South African SMEs located in the Gauteng and Western Cape provinces which had an email and were registered on the four chosen online databases. That decision was driven by the fact that these two provinces are the two major business hubs in the country and were also involved the most in hosting of the World Cup matches in 2010. SMEs’ online presence enabled the researcher to conducts the study in an efficient and cost-effective way. More research is required in the future which would test the framework in different settings, with a different sample and also within an alternative time focus, mainly pre-and post-event.

The main aim is to analyze and describe the situation of the demand for badminton in Czech Republic and to verify if this demand is increasing or decreasing. Furthermore to think about which instruments would help to develop the demand for badminton. Some perspective for the future is the development of marketing activities. The opportunities for sports marketing I will try to present at a practical example of the SPORT INVEST Marketing company stands for the currently best Czech badminton player.

The purpose of this thesis was to explore stakeholder response to the increase in corporate involvement in college sports. As tough economic times have been steadily realized into a recession, the rise in educational costs and in amount of money required to run athletic programs have placed a tremendous need on athletic departments for money. As a result, a popular trend of outsourcing or selling, marketing rights to third party entities has been a quick way to raise needed revenues. In the selling of these marketing rights, athletic departments have essentially opened the door to allow for an increase in corporation involvement at these athletic events. This paper utilizes Fishbein and Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to discover how the increase in marketing efforts are impacting their stakeholders, or rather season ticket holders. The universities used in this study have within the last three years recently sold their marketing rights and belong to the same network company, ISP Sports. These universities are: Brigham Young University (BYU), Texas Christian University (TCU), and the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV). The first factor studied showed stakeholders of these universities hold negative beliefs about the impact the marketing efforts are having on their purchasing habits. The second factor studied demonstrated a slight negative normative belief towards a social perception of the willingness to support sponsors who support their university. The third factor studied demonstrated a somewhat positive belief towards perceived control over the marketing efforts. As a result, this case study shows a composite negative behavioral intention trend.

The master thesis deals with investigation of customers satisfaction in selected Prague beach volleyball sports centre Beachklub Pankrac. The goal of this thesis is to analyse the customer satisfaction and suggest the steps, which leads to remove mistakes and increase satisfaction. In the first part, there is described theory of marketing research and customer satisfaction. The selected method for research was online questioning. Research sample was selected randomly from the visitors of sports centre. The results are arranged in graphs and detailed compare. The result of this research is to propose a recommendation which leads to increasing of customer satisfaction. In general, is the visitors satisfaction on high level.