The Impact Of Sports Event Sponsorship On Audience Brand Perception And Purchase Behavior

Since the issuance of Several Opinions on Accelerating the Development of the Sports Industry and Promoting Sports Consumption in 2014,China’s sports events have developed rapidly,the sports industry has entered a new period,and sports event sponsorship has been favored by more and more enterprises.Under the background of the commercialization of sports event sponsorship and the fierce market competition,enterprises must not only demonstrate their own brand core values,but also develop sustainable sponsorship marketing strategies.The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics is a large-scale event with world-class influence,the brand ANTA selected in this study is a leading brand in the domestic sports industry,and the binding of the ANTA brand and the Beijing Winter Olympics is undoubtedly a "strong combination",such a representative sports event sponsorship event is worth learning from the brand management of enterprises.In addition,through the review of existing literature,it is found that scholars at home and abroad evaluate the sponsorship effect based on the impact and measurement of event sponsorship on brand equity,and there are fewer studies on the impact of sports event sponsorship on brand awareness and purchasing behavior.Therefore,the internal mechanism of ANTA’s sponsorship of the Beijing Winter Olympics affecting audience brand awareness and purchasing behavior is also worthy of in-depth exploration in this study.Through the combination of theoretical analysis and empirical research,this study sorts out and analyzes the relevant literature such as sports event sponsorship,brand cognition and purchase behavior,divides brand cognition into four dimensions: brand recall,brand identity,perceived quality and brand association,and takes the association network memory model as the theoretical basis to construct a theoretical model with sponsorship audience cognition,sponsorship matching as the independent variable,brand cognition as the mediating variable,and purchase behavior as the dependent variable.On this basis,SPSS25.0 software is used to statistically analyze the survey data,explore the differences between brand perception and purchase behavior in different category groups,and analyze the influence relationship between various variables.The conclusions are as follows:(1)Sponsorship matching has a significant impact on all dimensions of brand cognition,and sponsorship audience awareness has a significant positive impact on all dimensions of brand cognition in addition to brand recognition,and the impact of sponsorship matching on brand awareness is greater than that of sponsored audience cognition.(2)Audience brand perception has a significant positive impact on purchasing behavior,which is sorted by the degree of influence from largest to smallest: brand association,brand recall,perceived quality,and brand recognition.(3)Sponsored audience awareness and sponsorship matching have a significant positive impact on purchase behavior,and the influence of sponsorship matching is greater than the influence of sponsored audience.(4)Brand awareness plays a complete mediating role between sponsorship audience awareness and purchase behavior,and brand awareness plays a partial mediating role between sponsorship matching and purchase behavior.(5)There were differences in various variables among the survey population by gender,age,education,monthly income,average annual spending on sporting goods,and the amount spent on ANTA-related products.Based on this,the following suggestions are put forward:(1)take the sponsorship matching degree as the starting point and formulate a reasonable event sponsorship strategy;(2)Choose high-quality event platforms to amplify the value of brand communication;(3)Consumer-oriented,focusing on the continuity of event sponsorship.