Sport Event Image And Influencing Factors From The Perspective Of Athletes

With the steady development of social economy, the process of city developmenthas gradually accelerated, and the competitions between the cities are more intense.Under the similar competition way and content, the difference development strategycan create a unique image of the city and promote the further development.Sport event can not only enhance city exposure, but also make the city the focusof attention in a period of time. In recent years, many cities in China chose to hostsport events to promote regional economic growth and third industry development.Meanwhile, it can also promote the exchange and prosperity of culture and buildingthe destination image to some extent.With the development of brand strategy, sport plays a vital role in city marketing.Brand alliance theory believes, the well-known image will transfer to the new productimage by connecting these two products together. Through brand alliance, there istransform or compatibility happened between two brands image. Analyses how eventworks in building destination image or decide what kind of event can be used topromote further brand development need not only analyses the compatibility betweenevent and city, but also analysis the event characters, especially the event image holdin people’s mind, and whether it can create a better destination image or not.Relatively speaking, choose proper kind of event is the key point to realize two thingmatching and developing.Based on literature review, questionnaire survey and statistical analysis, thispaper chooses the2011Shanghai International Marathon as the object of study.Explore the event image dimensions from athletes perceptive, how demographicinformation influence on event image and the relationship between event image andfuture participating willingness. Based on literature review, this paper reviewed thebasic concept of cognitive psychology, brand image, event image etc firstly. Secondly,by using the method to analyze sponsorship and destination image as reference, thispaper comes up with theoretical hypothesis. Finally, using the Spss18.0to analyze thedata collecting by questionnaire, the paper draw three main conclusions listed below:1.2011Shanghai Marathon event image has four dimensions: sport event character, the scale and level of event, athletes’ emotional experience andevent organization situation.2. Demographic information like gender won’t impact on event image,but age, original region and anticipation times can make difference on eventimage.3. Event image can impact on the future participating willingness. Athletes’emotional experience and event organization situation have strongerinfluence on future plan than the other two dimensions.