Customer Engagement in Sports and its Impact on Brand Strength and Brand Equity through Social Media

Dimitrios Theocharis (), Georgios Tsekouropoulos and Eugenia Papaioanniu
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Dimitrios Theocharis: Mediterranean College, Greece,

International Conference on Economic Sciences and Business Administration, 2019, vol. 5, issue 1, 187-196

Abstract: Due to the increasing competition in almost every market and industry, today the companies should have a better understanding of their customers’ needs and expectations in order to stay competitive and generate profits (Cambra-Fierro, Melero-Polo & Vasquez-Carrasco, 2013). However, a company should not only aim to make a brand more attractive than competitors’ brands and cover consumers needs in a better way but also to turn the consumer into a fan of the brand by make him to want to get involved and associate with the brand (Prahlad & Ramaswamy, 2004). This idea is expressed by the concept of customer engagement. In the sport context, usually the term customer engagement is replaced by the term fan engagement. According to (Yoshida et.al., 2014) fan engagement consists of three dimensions: a) management cooperation, b) prosocial behavior, and c) performance tolerance. Despite the plethora of studies regarding customer engagement in many different industries, there is no an established scale for measuring customer engagement in sports context. However, the existing literature focused on the relationship and measurement of customer engagement based on a) nontransactional behaviors and (b) transactional behaviors. This behavioral approach of conceptualization of sports customer engagement is the most common, but in most cases the various researchers use different approaches. Regarding non- transactional behaviors include different aspects such as: performance tolerance (De Ruyter & Wetzels, 2000), increase of self-esteem by basking in reflected glory and cutting off reflected failure (Cialdini, Borden, Thorne, Walker, Freeman, & Sloan, 1976 cited in Yoshida et al., 2014), participation in memorable marketing events (Jowdy & McDonald, 2002), social interaction with friends and peers (Holt, 1995), participation and involvement on fans community-related behavior (Fisher & Wakefield, 1998), and positive word of mouth behavior (Swanson, Gwinner, Larson & Janda, 2003). Some of the above behaviors are self-oriented (e.g., basking in reflected glory), whereas other behaviors are team-oriented. Regarding the transactional behaviors, academic literature has focused on multiple and different subjects. Some of the findings include the relationship between customer engagement and games attended (Funk & James, 2001), the positive relationship of purchase intention and customer engagement (Kumar et. al., 2010) and the effect of customer engagement on the maintenance of a long-term relationship with a sports team (Jowdy & McDonald, 2002).

Keywords: customer engagement; social media; brand equity; digital marketing; online promotional development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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