Guest Editor's Introduction: Experimental Research in Sport Consumer Behavior
Sport consumer behavior has become a popular research domain in the field of sport marketing. Over the last decade, scholars have made tremendous efforts to develop a clearer understanding of the nature of sport-related experiences, needs and wants, and the benefits sport consumers derive from such experiences (Funk, Lock, Karg, & Pritchard, 2016). Although these efforts have contributed to describing key characteristics of sport consumers, (re)defining research constructs, and exploring the relationships between key constructs in sport consumer behavior research, scholars have predominately relied on cross-sectional studies and surveys, which limit our theoretical understanding of the decision making process of sport consumers (Funk, Mahony, & Havitz, 2003; Ko et al., 2017). In their symposium discussion at the 2017 North American Society for Sport Management conference, Ko et al. discussed a need for utilizing more rigorous tactics of experimental research designs to establish causal explanations of sport consumption, and thus, develop and expand theories associated with sport consumer behavior.