Articles in this issue:

• An Inquiry into the Effectiveness of an In-Game Sponsorship Activation Experience on Sponsorship Awareness and Share of Wallet

  Thomas M. Hickman

  This article explores the impact of an In-Game Sponsorship Activation Experience (SAE) on its ability to promote sponsorship awareness and share of wallet gains for the sponsoring brand of a college basketball team. The term In-Game SAE is introduced to the literature and is defined as entertainment featuring the sponsoring brand that occurs during a game, which allows for voluntary fan participation. In addition, three other sponsors of the same team are studied that did not utilize an In-Game SAE. Results indicate that an In-Game SAE elevates awareness and share of wallet among attendees...Read more

• Investigating Sport Fan Attitudes Toward Tanking: The Role of Values-Based Connections

  K. Damon Aiken

  Ajay Sukhdial

  Richard M. Campbell

  Jr.

  and Aubrey Kent

  While previous research has found support for the existence of tanking in professional sport, attitudinal complexities surrounding the phenomenon have yet to be investigated. This study utilized Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service to obtain a national sample of National Basketball Association (NBA) fans. The sample contained fans of all thirty NBA teams. Respondents provided data regarding their overall attitudes toward tanking as well as their underlying old school values, time-oriented values, and ethics-based values. Results indicate that fans have a relatively strong dislike for perceived...Read more

• The Effect of Attribution on Athlete Scandals: Consumer Responses Toward Scandalized Athletes and Endorsements

  Daehwan Kim

  Yong Jae Ko

  Joon Sung Lee

  and Shintaro Sato

  The purpose of the current study, drawing on attribution theory, was to investigate consumers’ attribution process and its impact on their responses to a scandalized athlete and endorsement. The results of the experiment indicate that the distinctiveness of an athlete scandal prompts external attribution while having a negative impact on internal attribution. Additionally, the consistency of an athlete scandal triggers internal attribution. Moreover, the results show that internal (external) attribution has direct negative (positive) impact on attitude toward the scandalized athlete....Read more

• Team Identification and Negotiation: A Mediated-Moderation Model of Constraints, Motivation, and Sport Consumption

  Kevin K. Byon

  Carolina Alves de Lima Salge

  Thomas A. Baker III

  and Charles W. Jones

  The purpose of the current study was to examine (a) the mediating effect of negotiation on the relationship between fans’ motivations and constraints to consume sport and to (b) investigate the moderating role of team identification in a sport consumption model of motivation, constraints, and negotiation. Using two datasets from various college athletics stakeholders (i.e., students, alumni, and non-college associated fans) at a large university in the southeastern United States. Our analyses using structural equation modeling show that negotiation mediates the relationship between...Read more

• Exploring the Explicit and Implicit Appeal of Retro Sport Logos

  Brendan Dwyer

  Zach Scola

  and Joris Drayer

  The current multi-study examination explored explicit and implicit appeal of a prominent form of retro sport marketing: retro team logos. Study 1 utilized the stimuli-organism-response framework to test preference differences between those offered team merchandise with a retro logo and those offered the same merchandise with the current logo. Statistically significant preference differences were not uncovered, yet it was found that previous exposure to the retro logo negatively impacted preference of the retro logo. Based on these results, Study 2 utilized an implicit association test to...Read more