FiT Publishing

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

Effective consumer segmentation is crucial to accurately address target markets and develop marketing campaigns. Sport industry practitioners increasingly segment their consumers using behavior and attitudinal measures. To accommodate the need for ease and speed of responses, practitioners generally employ single- item attitudinal measures to examine the level of fandom of their consumer base. Th e current research bridges a gap between academia and industry by examining the utility of a single-item self-perception fandom measure. Findings of three studies indicate that the single-item...Read more

With increased exposure on college athletics, coaches are often subject to augmented attention from fans. However, little research has focused on the drawing power that coaches exude as essential components of the sport product. Given the tenets of social identity theory, which focus on the value of group membership and the development of prototype characteristics and associated biases within a group and its leaders, it is reasonable to suggest that coaches induce fan attachment. Multiple regression analyses revealed that perceived congruence between the coach and prototype for the program...Read more

eSports–organized video game competitions–are growing in popularity, with top tournaments drawing crowds of spectators rivaling traditional sporting events. Understanding the extent to which eSport operates similarly to traditional sport is vital to developing marketing strategies for the eSport industry and informing academic research on eSport. Prior research has examined eSports in isolation from traditional sports, overlooking direct comparisons to understand the degree to which eSport spectators are motivated similarly to traditional sport spectators. The current study measures widely...Read more

Despite the high levels of team identification associated with many sport fans, previous research has established that even these consumers must be enticed with offers that are perceived to be good values before making a purchase. The current study examined three key areas related to perceived value in a spectator sport setting. First, we tested and confirmed the mediating effect of perceived value on the relationship between team identification and purchase intention in the context of sport event tickets. Second, we examined search intention as a behavioral outcome in an environment (i.e...Read more

In spite of the prominence of social media within sport marketing and increased attention from researchers, very few studies have looked at the linguistic makeup of social media content in sport. The values and emotions a company tweets convey important information about brands and marketing efforts. The research used two studies to computationally analyze thousands of tweets from four baseball teams and four apparel companies. Results show unique relations between values and emotions across both baseball teams and apparel companies. As an example, Nike communicated the value sense of...Read more

An interview with Adam Lippard, head of Global Sports and Entertainment Consulting, GMR Marketing.Read more

The chime of a new email went initially unnoticed as Sarah Fletcher finished reading yet another reporter’s critique of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). It had been six weeks since UAB president Ray Watts announced the decision to discontinue the university’s Division I football program. While the proverbial dust had settled, some stakeholder groups1 remained discontent following the controversial decision to become the first Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) program to disband in nearly 20 years. As the director of marketing for the UAB athletic department, Fletcher felt...Read more

An interview with Joyce Caron-Mercier, vice president of The Specialized Marketing Group.Read more

An interview with Grant Jostol, Business Data Analyst for the Seattle Mariners.Read more