The Selection Strategy Of Sport Sponsorship Objective Based On Brand Equity Theory

As the word came into the twenty-first century, the most frequently satellite word ofsports is the sports industry. After plenty of sports events held in China, especially the2008Beijing Olympic Games and2010Guangzhou Asia Games, companies startedleveraged into the public view by the event. Sponsorship marketing have won morespeak rights than ever before. Sport sponsorship has become an important marketingtool to promote the cooperation brand and image. The sport sponsorship also hasintegrated from a simple sport star or a sport stadium to a sports sponsorship portfoliothat includes various sport sponsorship objectives. Brand equity theory was born atthe beginning of the1980s. Although it’s just30years development, brand equity hasincreasingly gained the attention of entrepreneurs. The levels of brand equitydimensions are not the same for companies in different development stages, so theexpected growth of brand equity dimensions is different either.With the rapid growth of the global sports sponsorship market, sports sponsorshipmarketing costs are soaring. Whether huge sponsorship investment can achieve thedesired purpose has caught great attention. The paper used methodology of literatureview, interviews, questionnaires, and quantitative analysis to investigate therelationship between sport sponsorship objectives and brand equities.Through the experiment we draw three conclusions first, there’s a strong correlationbetween sports sponsorship and brand equity improvement. There are also strongcorrelations between ‘sport star sponsorship’ and four brand equity dimensions,‘sportevent sponsorship’ and ‘brand awareness’‘perceived quality’‘brand loyalty’;‘sportleague sponsorship’ and ‘perceived quality’;‘sport club sponsorship’ and ‘perceivedquality’‘brand loyalty’;‘sport stadium sponsorship’ and ‘brand loyalty’. Second,there’s no strong correlation between ‘brand awareness’ and different sport sponsorshipobjectives. But there are strong correlations between ‘sport league sponsorship’‘sportclub sponsorship’ and ‘perceived quality’;‘sport club sponsorship’‘sport starsponsorship’ and ‘brand loyalty’;‘sport star sponsorship’ and ‘brand association’.Third, there’s no strong correlation between sex difference and brand equityimprovement. There’s a strong correlation between sport preference and ‘perceivedquality’‘brand loyalty’‘brand association’.In this paper, there’re some limitations like the experiment was confined to teenagers,the sportswear industry has been studied a lot. As an exploratory study, there’re somelimitations about conclusions and recommendations that needs to be proved bypractical verification.