Empirical Study Of Effect Of Sprots Events Sponsorship On Enterprise's Brand Image

As a marketing tool which is more effective than the traditional advertisements, sports events sponsorship can not only provide wide media reports and help the enterprises gain the direct communications with the target consumers, but it can also make contribution to the increase in value for the image of the enterprises and their products by the positive image of the active, aggressive, and vibrant sports events. Sports events sponsorship is increasingly rising in China, and it has become the scarce resources competed by the enterprises. However, the effects of the sponsorship couldn't satisfy the expectation of the enterprises under the competitive conditions. With a great deal of search and classification of the literature, it is found that there is an obvious shortage of the study of competitive factors. Thereby, this thesis, based on the current research, aims at analyzing the effects of the competitive sponsorship on sponsoring sports events, which mainly focuses on the effects of the brand image of the enterprises.The thesis makes a deep analysis of the theory works and enterprises cases, and systematically constructs a model of the effects of competitive sponsorship on brand image by way of logical reasoning and speculative induction. The thesis testifies research hypothesis and theoretical model with the interviews of focus groups, discusses how to determine the independent variables and moderating variables and select the test stimulus. It uses the experimental method to testify the model and hypothesis, and tries to select the test stimulus by questionnaires for the statistics of the results. The collected data are tested in the aspects of validity, reliability, relevance, variance and t-testing through SPSS.18 software.Based on specific researches, this thesis is presented at the following six chapters in general.Chapter 1 is introduction. The problems this thesis discusses are put forward, background and the theoretical and practical significances of this thesis are introduced at first. Then, it briefly discusses the content and the method used in the thesis, defines certain essential concepts, constructs the whole framework and innovations.Chapter 2 is the comprehensive overview of theory. Author systematically represents those relative theories of sponsorship marketing, brand assets, and dynamic competition. Based on corresponding content, this thesis sorts out those latest achievements on sponsorship relationship,theoretical approaches explaining how consumers respond to sponorship messages,and influence factors of sponsorship outcome. Then, the paper analyzes the constitution dimensions of brand assets and pays more attention to the brand image which gives answers to dependent variable measure. At last, based on the dynamic competition theory, the paper emphasizes on the competition and competition interaction.Chapter 3 is about research design. The paper makes a deconstruction of the research variables. Based on the study of the classic documents, the paper clearly defines sports event sponsorship, brand image and the influence of competitive sponsorship on enterprise sports event sponsorship. Furthermore, taking differences of brand assets as the starting point, this paper raises hypothesis and research methods, and discusses two questions in main which are influences of event sponsorship on enterprises'brand image and analyses of regulatory role of different brand assets enterprise competition sponsorships behavior.Chapter 4 is about questionnaire and the primary statistics analysis. At the beginning, it systematically introduces the design of the questionnaire, the selection of the samples, and the collection of the data. Then, it comes the pretesting of the questionnaire, that is, to select and improve the testing items in order to achieve the more stable and accurate results in light of its reliability and validity. Finally, it makes"the statistical analysis of the data from the tested model.Chapter 5 is the model testing based on the survey data. With the collected questionnaires, the data of different experimental groups are compared and analyzed so as to know about the moderating effects of competitive sponsorship from different corporations with their own brands. Finally, it testifies every hypothesis proposed in the last chapter.Chapter 6 is the conclusions and suggestions. It talks about the meaningful conclusions found in this study, provides some suggestions for the companies when sponsoring sports events, and discusses the limitation of this study as well. At last, this study brings up some findings as follows:sports events sponsorship helps to raise the brand image of the companies; the competitive sponsorship between companies with low brands helps to promote the brand personality; the competitive sponsorship between companies helps to reduce the perception of the perceived value; sports events sponsorship from the companies with low brands has a great effect on companies. Hereby, it provides some suggestions for the companies for sponsorship as follows:we must pay attention to the combinational strategy of the sports events sponsorship, set up a long term cooperative relationship to make a full use of the sponsoring resources, focus on the positioning of products differentiation while selecting sports events to sponsor, and use sponsorship as a leverage to raise the recognition of the consumers on the products quality. The study brings inspirations and values to both academics and practice.