Brand equity’s influence on responses to event sponsorships
| Date | 01 November 2003 |
| Pages | 377-393 |
| Published date | 01 November 2003 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/10610420310498803 |
| Author | Donald P. Roy,T. Bettina Cornwell |
| Subject Matter | Marketing |
Brand equity's influence on
responses to event sponsorships
Donald P. Roy
Assistant Professor of Marketing, Middle Tennessee State University,
Murfreesboro, Tennessee, USA
T. Bettina Cornwell
Reader in Marketing, Business School, The University of Queensland,
Brisbane, Australia
Keywords Brand equity, Sponsorship, Information science and documentation, Sports,
Marketing, Consumers
Abstract Recent research into consumer responses to sponsorships has examined the role
of sponsor-event fit on cognitive and affective responses. However, influences on
sponsor-event fit have received little consideration. In this study, a sponsor's brand equity
is evaluated as a facilitator of sponsor-event fit. Six sponsors (three high equity/three low
equity) were paired with six events. Results of hypothesis testing indicated that sponsors
with high brand equity were perceived as more congruent sponsors than sponsors with
low brand equity even though the events sponsored were identical. Also, a positive
relationship was found between sponsor-event congruence and favorable attitudes toward
the sponsor. Results of this study suggest that consumers' attitudes toward sponsors are
comprised of associations other than the sponsor-event association. While lesser known
brands can use sponsorship as a brand-building vehicle, they may not attain the same
level of results as their high equity counterparts.
Introduction
Corporate sponsorship of sports and other events is one of the fastest
growing forms of marketing communications used to reach target audiences.
The rate of growth in sponsorship expenditures is greater than for traditional
media advertising and sales promotion. Corporate spending on sponsorship
worldwide was estimated to grow 12 percent in 2001. The sponsorship
industry in North America was estimated to be $9.5 billion in 2001, and
worldwide spending on sponsorship $24.4 billion in the same year (``Learn
more about sponsorship'', 2001). According to the International Events
Group (IEG), sporting events are the most popular event type, with an
estimated 67 per cent of all sponsorship money invested in sporting events.
Traditional communications vehicles such as advertising and sales
promotion are faced with the challenges of reaching increasingly fragmented
consumer markets and cutting through an overload of messages aimed at
consumers (Meenaghan, 1998). Sponsorship is viewed as a means of
avoiding this clutter by enabling sponsors to identify and target well-defined
audiences in terms of demographics and lifestyles. Linking a brand with an
event via sponsorship enables firms to gain consumers' attention and interest
by associating with events that are important to them. Despite the increased
use of sponsorship to reach market segments there has been little research on
the impact of sponsorship on consumer behavior.
The main purpose of the current study is to examine the influence of brand
equity in shaping consumers' perceptions of sponsor-event congruence.
Brand equity is examined to determine what role, if any, a sponsor's equity
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/1061-0421.htm
Corporate sponsorship
Influence of brand equity
JOURNAL OF PRODUCT & BRAND MANAGEMENT, VOL. 12 NO. 6 2003, pp. 377-393, #MCB UP LIMITED, 1061-0421, DOI 10.1108/10610420310498803 377
An executive summary for
managers and executive
readers can be found at the
end of this article
has in consumers' perceptions of the match, or appropriateness of a brand
and event being paired together via sponsorship. Some consideration of a
brand's influence has been given in terms of examining the impact of a
firm's market dominance on correct sponsor identification (Johar and Pham,
1999; Pham and Johar, 2001), but the brand equity possessed by a sponsor
has not been examined as an influence of consumers' perceptions of
sponsor-event congruence.
Literature review
Sponsorship
A body of literature has emerged in the last 15 to 20 years that examines
corporate event sponsorship as a distinct marketing communications vehicle
that complements a firm's marketing communications program (see
Cornwell and Maignan (1998) for a review of research in this area). Early
research on sponsorship attempted to establish the role of sponsorship in
marketing communications (e.g. Meenaghan, 1983, 1991) and how sponsor
organizations planned, executed, and measured event sponsorships (e.g.
Abratt et al., 1987; Crowley, 1991; Shanklin and Kuzma, 1992). Recent
research on sponsorship has incorporated various theories in an effort to
explain the effects of sponsorship on consumer behaviors (e.g. Gwinner,
1997; Gwinner and Eaton, 1999; Johar and Pham, 1999; McDaniel, 1999;
Pham and Johar, 2001; Speed and Thompson, 2000).
Although several definitions of sponsorship have been given in the literature
(Gardner and Schuman, 1987; Meenaghan, 1983), we adopt for this study a
definition in wide use. The International Events Group (IEG), one of the
leading sources of information for the sponsorship industry, has defined
sponsorship as:
... a cash and/or in-kind fee paid to a property (typically a sports, entertainment,
non-profit event or organization) in return for access to the exploitable commercial
potential associated with that property (IEG Glossary and Lexicon, 2001).
The IEG definition of sponsorship is widely accepted because of its currency
and its applicability to both academic and practitioner discussions of
sponsorship.
As the sponsorship literature has evolved, researchers have begun to use
various theoretical approaches for explaining how consumers respond to
sponsorship messages. Examination of cognitive processes has been a central
part of this inquiry. Several studies have set forth either schema theory or
congruence as an explanation of how consumers respond to event
sponsorships (Crimmins and Horn, 1996; Gwinner and Eaton, 1999; Johar
and Pham, 1999; McDaniel, 1999; Speed and Thompson, 2000). When
consumers are exposed to information about a sponsorship (e.g. Xerox's
sponsorship of the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics), a schema-based
explanation of consumer response suggests that information about the
sponsor and event are accessed from memory and the new information is
compared with the schema. These schemas are used to make judgments on
the appropriateness (or inappropriateness) of a product and event presented
together via sponsorship. Results from the above mentioned studies concur
that consumers who perceive fit or relatedness between sponsor and event
generally have more positive responses to a sponsorship, including sponsor
recognition (Johar and Pham, 1999; Pham and Johar, 2001), image transfer
from event to sponsor (Gwinner and Eaton, 1999), and favorability toward
sponsor (Speed and Thompson, 2000).
Early research
Theoretical approaches
378 JOURNAL OF PRODUCT & BRAND MANAGEMENT, VOL. 12 NO. 6 2003
To continue reading
Request your trial