An evaluation of the effectiveness of rugby event sponsorship: a study of Dove Men+Care and the Welsh Rugby Union
| Date | 18 August 2014 |
| Published date | 18 August 2014 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-03-2014-0533 |
| Pages | 304-321 |
| Author | Robert James Thomas |
| Subject Matter | Marketing,Product management,Brand management/equity |
An evaluation of the effectiveness of rugby
event sponsorship: a study of Dove MenⴙCare
and the Welsh Rugby Union
Robert James Thomas
School of Management, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Cardiff, UK
Abstract
Purpose – The aim of this study is to evaluate rugby fans’ attitudes toward financial sponsorship, specifically event sponsorship and Dove
Men⫹Care and its association with the Welsh Rugby Union. The study examines four issues: How do rugby fans perceive event sponsorship? How
does such sponsorship affect consumption choices? Do fans engage in long-term relationships with the event’s sponsoring brand? Are relationships
affected by the event sponsor’s engagement with other international teams and rugby events?
Design/methodology/approach – This paper is a theory-building, exploratory study that utilised a qualitative framework. Data were collected over
a 12-month period, incorporating the autumn internationals of 2012 and 2013, with 198 fans participating in focus groups before and after games.
Findings – The results reveal a distinct lack of brand awareness on the part of the participants, a collective perception of the sponsor as incongruent
given the event and a demonstration of enmity arising from rival sponsorships by the sponsoring brand. Additionally, the findings reveal a reluctance
to consume the sponsoring brand in either the short or long term given its incongruence, lack of functionality, pre-existing schematic frameworks
and obdurate brand preferences.
Research limitations/implications – Given that autumn internationals are held every season by several of the international rugby board (IRB)
ranked teams, the findings of this research have an immediate and direct application for brand managers involved or implementing sponsorship
programs. The research outlines both short and long term mistakes made by the sponsor as perceived by the fans’ themselves, and suggests that
those brands considering becoming involved in sport and event sponsorship instigate a more informed, strategic approach to their sponsorship
activities. However, the work is context driven and therefore not generalisable.
Practical implications – The findings enable marketing brand managers to effectively evaluate events against the backdrop of strategic fit, as well
as fan/consumer expectations, their needs and wants and willingness to engage.
Originality/value – Despite rugby union’s growing global presence, little or no research has examined sponsorship within the context of rugby
union and none exists that has evaluated event sponsorship, and been driven by fans’ perspectives. This paper fills that void. The research delineates
fans attitudes, opinions and brand conceptualisations relating to event sponsorship, incorporating evaluations of identity, congruence and fit.
Moreover, the paper highlights what to avoid from a strategic and brand building perspective when considering event sponsorship in a rugby union
context.
Keywords Brand loyalty, Qualitative research, Brand identification, Brand evaluation, Customer engagement
Paper type Research paper
An executive summary for managers and executive
readers can be found at the end of this issue.
Introduction
It is suggested that the effective use and implementation of
sports sponsorship as a strategic, marketing tool is beyond
doubt (Alexandris and Tsiotsou, 2012;Antil et al., 2012;
Burton and O’Reilly, 2011;Clark et al., 2002). The process is
perceived as the means to engage with fans, incite
consumption (Chanavat et al., 2010;Levin et al., 2001) and
develop long-term, strategically essential relationships to gain
a competitive advantage (Alexandris and Tsiotsou, 2012;
Farrelly and Quester, 2004;Jensen et al., 2012) Briefly, it
involves “investing in a sports entity (athlete, league, team or
event) to support the overall organisational objectives,
marketing and promotional strategies” (Shank, 2009, p. 324),
with such activities acting as “a platform for building,
strengthening and maintaining brand image” (Woisetschläger
and Michaelis, 2012, p. 510). However, much of the historical
and current research into this field has concentrated on
individual athletes and endorsements (Antil et al., 2012;Bush
et al., 2004), ethnocentric American sports (Bodet and
Chanavat, 2010;Dees et al., 2008;Levin et al., 2001) and,
invariably, football or soccer (Abosag et al., 2012;Jensen et al.,
2012;Wang et al., 2011;Woisetschläger and Michaelis,
2012). Only Thwaites and Carruthers (1998),Motion et al.
(2003),Cliffe and Motion (2005) and Alexander (2007,
2009) have approached rugby sponsorship meaningfully, and
given that strategic success is deemed the de facto position for
sponsorship activity, this void is a substantive one.
A review of the literature clearly indicates that little or
nothing is known about how rugby fans integrate with event
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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Journal of Product & Brand Management
23/4/5 (2014) 304–321
© Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 1061-0421]
[DOI 10.1108/JPBM-03-2014-0533]
304
sponsorship. The rationale for this is that despite growth and
the global nature of rugby union, academic and empirical
evaluations of rugby sponsorship and rugby event sponsorship
are scarce as the paucity of the extant literature reviewed
demonstrates. It is this paucity that provides the foundations
of the work and the central proposition that to be successful,
sponsorship strategies needed to be based on “an in-depth
knowledge of supporter brand emotion” (Abosag et al., 2012,
p. 1,247). What is available has invariably looked at long-term,
team sponsorship or the impact of sponsorship after deal
expiration. Given the above, and what is a maligned academic
stream, this paper offers a rigorous and meaningful solution to
that problem, by moving the sports event sponsorship
literature away from football World Cups and the Olympic
games, the associated experimental evaluations of sponsor
recall and focusing on the specific nature of the individual and
their relationship with the event sponsor. The findings offer a
potential new stream of literature, as the paper offers insight
into fans’ lived experience, perceptions of ongoing
sponsorship and actual consumption and the reasons and
extrinsic predicates for consumption or, in the case of this
paper, the reasons for non-engagement, and emphatically
concurs that fans are “not just passive receivers of marketing
information (sponsorship)” (Abosag et al., 2012, p. 1,235).
This work isolates those elements relating to fans’ evaluations,
interactions and attitudes toward the strategic partnership
between Unilever’s Dove Men⫹Care brand and the Welsh
Rugby Union (WRU). It achieves this by utilizing the
taxonomy posited by Renard and Sitz (2011) of elements that
should and can be affected by sponsorship (key opinion leaders,
consumers, business partners, executives and employees), with
specific emphasis placed on consumers, conceptualised, in this
instance, as fans. The taxonomy is used in conjunction with
Cornwell’s (1995) six-step model of sponsorship development
(analysis of the situation, determination of objectives,
development of sponsorship-related strategy, creation of
sponsorship link, sponsorship implementation and sponsorship
evaluation), insofar as the work’s orientation offered the
opportunity to evaluate the “current situation” and evaluate fans’
opinions, and Woisetschläger and Michaelis’s (2012) triadic
relationship relating to sponsorship and the likelihood of
engagement (person, sponsor and event). Taking explicit themes
from the literature, the work sought to explore the following
objectives:
●to evaluate fans’ perceptions of Dove Men⫹Care as a
brand, and their fit as a sponsor;
●to assess if current sponsorship by Dove Men⫹Care has
had an impact on the brand preference and consumption
habits of event attendees;
●to consider if the long-term relationship between Dove
Men⫹Care and the WRU is a predicate for a fan-based,
long-term engagement with the brand; and
●to explore if Dove Men⫹Care’s sponsorship of other
UK-based, national rugby teams has had an impact on
brand perceptions and willingness to engage with the
brand.
Contribution
The contribution of this research is three-fold. First, the
work approaches and evaluates the impact of event
sponsorship from a rugby union perspective. This is
significant as, to date, there is no empirical evidence that
offers insight, theoretical differentiation or practitioner
guidelines as to what is effective and ineffective in relation
to event sponsorship in this context. Second, the
methodologically anomalous, longitudinal, qualitative
approach provides revelatory insight into intrinsic
engagement with rugby event sponsorship. The approach
elucidates the interrelationships that provide genuine
managerial insight predicated on lived experiences. Such an
approach moves understanding beyond the simple
acknowledgement that fans are merely “out there” and
ensures that the consistent concerns of supporters, as
identified in this work, can be acknowledged, addressed and
ultimately assuaged. Third, the work demonstrates
theoretically that low fit between sponsor and event
increases fan scrutiny of the sponsor, with questions arising
relating to trust, in both a broad and interpersonal sense.
This is manifest in a collective questioning of the sponsor’s
motives, particularly the atavistic intentions associated with
the marketing function. The paper also extends work on the
impact of brands advocating and demonstrating a more
socially orientated approach to sponsorship. Concurrent
with Simmons and Becker-Olsen (2006), the data revealed
that fans advocated that an event sponsor could increase the
likelihood of engagement and recall through the adoption of
a more sequential, social approach to sponsorship, with
particular emphasis placed on understanding the cultural
idioms associated with the event itself and an immersion
into the sport associated with the event but beyond the
parameters of the event. Additionally, the work affirms the
view of the sponsor’s product as a commodity that has event
congruence and that can be consumed or utilised during the
event itself. At its core, the work questions and challenges
the theoretical basis of what might be achieved through
event sponsorship. The work suggests that the phenomenon
of event sponsorship, albeit contextualized, is fraught with
difficulty, as fan decision-making strategies do not yield to
managerial and strategic assumptions relating to brand/
product fit and identity. The work demonstrates the
necessity of understanding the nuanced parameters of fan
engagement prior to strategic engagement, and,
subsequently, the paper critically questions the theoretical
notion that finding an audience, any audience, from an
event perspective, is a sufficient building block for brand
engagement.
Literature review
A comprehensive review of the sports sponsorship literature is
beyond the scope and remit of this paper. Subsequently, the
review covers those elements that have driven the research and
those that have formed significant streams within the extant
literature.
Sponsorship, fans and identification: theoretical
propositions
As outlined above, much of the extant literature in relation to
sports sponsorship has been dominated by football (soccer),
and, therefore, what has been generated from a fans’
perspective has almost invariably used football as a conceptual
An evaluation of the effectiveness of rugby event sponsorship
Robert James Thomas
Journal of Product & Brand Management
Volume 23 · Number 4/5 · 2014 · 304–321
305
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