Articles in this issue:

• From Sensation to Emotion: A Neuromarketing Study of Sport Sponsorship Effects

  Sanghak Lee

  Kitae Kim

  Yong J. Hyun

  and Byungho Park

  This study investigated the sport sponsorship effects by applying the traditional response hierarchy models. Measured by a neuromarketing technique (i.e., electroencephalogram [EEG]), the study analyzed how sport fans’ sensation and emotion influence sponsorship effects. The Korea Republic National Football Team’s A match videos were shown as experiment stimuli to manipulate participants’ arousal and emotion in the experiment. Based on alpha blocking and hemispheric laterality theories, the current study found that alpha blocking occurred when participants were exposed to sensational...Read more

• An Experimental Investigation Into the Efficacy of Sport Intellectual Property: Exploring the Effects of Congruence, Brand Equity, and Articulation

  Jonathan A. Jensen and Danielle Kushner Smith

  Marketers allocate significant resources to purchase the rights to the sport intellectual property (SIP) of sponsored properties. However, the effectiveness of SIP in influencing sponsorship-related outcomes, such as brand attitudes and purchase intentions, are lacking in empirical studies. Further, it is unknown whether moderators such as congruence, brand equity, and articulation influence SIP usage outcomes. Therefore, between-subject experimental designs involving the manipulation of package designs were undertaken across three studies. Results indicate the use of SIP on packaging was...Read more

• Team Identification in Esports: The Benefits of Localizing an Esports Team

  Yongjin Hwang

  Wil Fisackerly

  and Bob Heere

  Associating esports teams with a particular city has gained significant attention, with the assumption that esports teams receive benefits from the local fanbase as traditional sports teams take advantage of the local community. The researchers examined whether team identification was important in esports as it is in traditional sports and tested if local and nonlocal fans showed different levels of team identification after localization. The results of path analyses revealed that team identification had a positive impact on team loyalty and consumer behavior. Additionally, team loyalty...Read more

• Look What We Have Here: Exploring Brand-Related Sport Consumer Twitter Conversation Topics

  Liz Wanless

  Heather Kennedy

  Melissa Davies

  Michael L. Naraine

  and Ann Pegoraro

  As sport organizations leverage social media as a critical component of marketing strategy, tools for exploring the large volume of sport consumer social media conversations are vital. This scholarship demonstrates the value of unsupervised latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) as a tool for exploring consumers’ digital conversations. Specifically, unsupervised LDA was applied to derive latent topics among Women’s National Basketball Association-related Twitter conversation over the course of the 2020 season. Quantitative (cv and umass scores) and qualitative (two expert reviews) approaches...Read more

• Fan Networks in Women’s Sport: An Egocentric Analysis of Social Fans and IsoFans

  Matthew Katz

  E. Nicole Melton

  Risa F. Isard

  and Nola Agha

  Guided by network theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore the consumption networks of Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) fans. Through an egocentric network analysis, the authors utilize hierarchical linear modeling to examine the strength of consumption ties among WNBA fans during the 2019 season. Initial results revealed an unexpected finding: the presence of participants who reported having no fan-to-fan ties, whom we term IsoFans. A second sample of men’s basketball fans was then collected to serve as a comparative confirmation of the unexpected result, whereby...Read more

• Worth a Shot? The Impact of Athletes’ Vaccine Advocacy on Fan Attitudes and Behaviors

  Molly Hayes Sauder

  Michael Mudrick

  and Melissa Davies

  Sport activism and advocacy have received substantial attention in both academic and popular literature. However, recent years brought controversy, and corresponding advocacy, around a new topic—COVID-19 vaccines—which offers an interesting research opportunity since fans may view athlete engagement with health topics differently from other causes. Thus, this study explored the effect of athlete health-related advocacy on the corresponding fan attitudinal and behavioral changes directed toward both the athlete and the athlete’s team. A quasi-experimental design was utilized and both...Read more