FiT Publishing

Certain constructs influence relationships within community organizations and the not-for-profit sport sector. This qualitative study identified influences on relationships and determinants of successful and unsuccessful partnerships and determined the application of 28 constructs derived from literature on relationship marketing, education partnerships, and health and community service partnerships. Results of interviews with 15 personnel from Australian sport, education, and health and community service agencies indicated that partnerships achieve goals that the individual partners could...Read more

It was March 31, 2003, and the Coca-Cola Classic brand management team was excited about enjoying another Major League Baseball opening day at Turner Field against the visiting Montreal Expos. As the team drove out to Turner Field, most of the talk centered on the Atlanta Braves’ prospects for the upcoming season. Jill Smith, however, had her mind on football—specifically, the 2004 Super Bowl in Houston—only 10 months away. Although Coca-Cola was no longer the official soft drink sponsor of the National Football League—rival Pepsi-Cola had outbid Coca-Cola for those rights in 2002—Coca-...Read more

Sporting events have increasingly become the epicenter of sponsorship or logo showcasing and the concept of sponsorship has changed the way sport marketers view sporting events ever so drastically. The amount of logo exposure at sporting venues determines the fine line between instant elation and intolerable anguish for sport marketers. Do consumers then actually notice the multitude of logos that the sponsors bombard them with at these sporting events? The purpose of this study is to investigate what an average spectator at a sporting event visually records in a two-hour span. The...Read more

The purpose of this study was to assess the marketing communication activations of a professional tennis tournament. Results indicate that respondents were satisfied with the marketing communications activations chosen by managers and marketers of the event. For example, most spectators (77%) learned of the event from television, which was their preferred media for becoming aware of the tournament. In addition, most spectators (94.6%) believed that it was good for companies, and specifically those based in Houston or Texas, to sponsor the tournament. The spectators also indicated that such...Read more

This paper investigates auto racing sponsorships by cigarette manufacturers from 2000-2002 and builds on earlier work which found that by using event sponsorships tobacco companies enjoyed significant television exposure for popular cigarette brands. We examine cigarette sponsorship of televised motor events in an attempt to quantify this exposure in terms of time and monetary value. We document the first declines in total exposure time achieved by cigarette companies through these broadcasts, but concurrently identify increases in audiences for the races. Results indicate that cigarette...Read more

The United States sports industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. Corporations attempt to curry favor with consumers by aligning their products and services with this popular industry through sports sponsorship and endorsement opportunities. The upside to this association is well-documented in the sports marketing literature. Less well known however, is the impact on corporate brands when a scandal erupts around an athletic endorser such as a team, coach, or player. Numerous sports scandals such as the recruiting scandal at the University of Colorado or the Kobe Bryant rape case raise...Read more

To determine how integrated TV advertising and event sponsorship should be best managed and evaluated, a theoretical framework derived from global exploratory research of academic literature and consulting reports was validated by 16 experts. To benchmark the current practices against the best practice integration methods, 12 campaigns, which had sponsored a televised event and placed advertisements during the broadcast of the event, were analyzed via case studies. The investigated competitions included the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament in London and the Olympic Games in Sydney. The examined...Read more

Integrated marketing communications usage, in particular, corporate sport sponsorship in conjunction with the marketing mix, has continued to mount over the past several years as companies strive to advance brand awareness and improve corporate image with respect to target markets. The popular press suggests that sponsorship can function as a tool for internal marketing, which is defined as a managerial strategy designed to motivate and enable organizational members to adopt a customer orientation, or to meet the needs of external customers. We explored the relationship between sponsorship...Read more

This study investigated the effects of college students' attitudes toward commercialization and their psychological attachment to an intercollegiate athletic program on their purchasing intentions of sponsors' products. The relationships between attitudes toward commercialization and psychological attachment were also examined. Data were collected from college students (N = 124) of a large Midwest University. A series of hierarchical regression analysis revealed that attitudes toward commercialization and psychological attachment together explained 28 percent of the variance in purchasing...Read more

Given the increasing dependence of sport organizations and events on corporate sponsorship, this study set out to examine the motivations of the Grand National sponsors of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games and the objectives they sought to fulfill through their sponsorship. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven of the ten Grand National Olympic sponsors. Findings indicated that these companies?decision to join the National Sponsoring Program was not entirely business-driven; rather, the desire to support the national effort and a sense of obligation led most companies to enter...Read more