A Study Of The Sport Team's Identity And The Corporate Image Of Their Sponsoring Enterprise

Nowadays, sponsorship in sports competitions has been becoming a very important marketing strategy for the corporate enterprises. This is particularly true at the upcoming Beijing Olympic when most of the international enterprises consider it as their opportunity to extend their sales platform. According to the IEG (International Event Group) Report 2002, there has been 24.4 billion USD spent on sponsorship, this is a 3.4% increase when comparing with the data of the year 2001. Almost 2/3 of this expenditure was supporting sport events. This also reflects in the situation of China where commercial sponsorship has become the most effective marketing strategy for the corporate.Even though commercial sponsor to sports events have been very active in China PRC for the past decade, there has been some practical problems. This study aims to base on the"Theory of Social Identity"to investigate the process and the effectiveness of commercial sponsorship in sports events and competitions. Based upon the characteristic of the sports teams, we shall investigate its impact on the image of the corporate through sports competitions. In the process of the"sponsorship effect", we correlate the recognition of the team and the sponsoring organization with the consumer behavior. We then draw up the conclusion of the sponsorship operation model for consideration.The sponsorship effectiveness can be summarized as follow: The perception of the characteristic of the sports teamsâ†'the transformation of the perception of the sports team to the perception of the corporationâ†'transformation of the perception of the corporate image to successfulness of the business target.This study targeted on the fans of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) professional basketball competitions. We selected 3 matches in the playoff season in 2006-07. Investigation was carried out at the CBA league in Hungyuan Gymansium at Dongguan. Anta Shoes Manufactory Company was the major sponsor of the year. We have distributed 400 questionnaires and there were 389 spectators gave feedback, only 37 questionnaires were incomplete and were not being accepted.All the measurement was using"self-descriptive measurement"methodology and the frequency is based on the previous studies. The questionnaire composed of 4 major areas: the characteristic of the team, recognition to the team, perception to the sponsoring corporate of the fans and corporate image of the sponsoring enterprise.Data analysis is based on the Structural Equation Modeling to examine the testing model and hypotheses. After finalizing the model, we made 7 hypotheses for investigation. Results are as follow: (1) Teams that have better performance will enhance recognition from the fans. (2) A well famed team will enhance higher recognition from the fans. (3) Star players of the team can enhance recognition of the team from the fans. (4) The popularity of the team will not enhance the recognition of the team from the fans. (5) Fans understand the similarity of themselves and the team will enhance the recognition of the team they support. (6) There is positive relationship between the fans and their team as well as the fans and the sponsoring corporate. (7) People's recognition towards an enterprise can raise the corporate image of the enterprise.After analysis, we came up with the following conclusion:1. Based on the Theory of social identity we have developed the recognition of the team, recognition of the corporate and the corporate image model. The sports team identity includes the performance of the team, their fame, the star players and the similarity of their fans would have decisive effect towards the recognition of their fans and the team. This recognition can transform to the sponsoring enterprise and will raise the corporate image of the sponsoring enterprise.2. Results suggest that the combination of sponsor and fans'favorite sport teams is important for the benefits of sponsoring enterprises. Sponsors should pay attention to team identification and enterprise identification. Except corporate image, corporate identification may have many important impacts, such as increasing brand loyalty, purchasing desire of consumers, etc.3. Star player is very important for the sponsors when they select prospective sport teams. The more star players the team has, the more attractive your star players are, the more conformity and cohesion between the image of corporate and the image of star players, the more valuable or worthwhile the sponsorships will be.