The Mobile Phone and Professional Sports: Fans’ Use of Mobile Content for Loyalty, Identification, and Fandom

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 452-476 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seok Kang
Keyword(s):  
Information Service ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
The United States ◽  
Team Identification ◽  
Sports Fans ◽  
Behavioral Loyalty ◽  
Attitudinal Loyalty ◽  
Sport Fans ◽  
Young Professional ◽  
Southwest Region

The purpose of this study was to examine how fans of professional sports use mobile content to develop fan support. Mobile-content dimensions were evaluated and their relationships with attitudinal and behavioral loyalty, team identification, and sport fandom were tested. A total of 665 young professional sport fans were surveyed in the southwest region of the United States. Three mobile-content dimensions—information, service, and interaction—were identified. The results indicate that the information dimension was positively associated with attitudinal loyalty, team identification, and sport fandom. The service dimension was positively linked to behavioral loyalty. The findings suggest that young professional sports fans’ selective use of mobile content accounts for different types of fan support.

scholarly journals How do brand personality, identification, and relationship length drive loyalty in sports?

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heikki Karjaluoto ◽  
Juha Munnukka ◽  
Milja Salmi
Keyword(s):  
Brand Personality ◽  
Ice Hockey ◽  
Sports Fans ◽  
Online Questionnaire ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Behavioral Loyalty ◽  
Attitudinal Loyalty ◽  
Relationship Length ◽  
Sports Team ◽  
Identification Theory

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to extend brand identification theory to the sports team context by testing the direct and indirect effects of a sports team’s personality, sports fans’ identification with the team, and the effect of the length of fans’ relationship with a team on their loyalty to it. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted a quantitative study among ice hockey fans of one Finnish hockey team before play-off games. Data came from an online questionnaire generating 1,166 responses. Findings – The authors find that: first, identification with a team mediates the effects of brand personality on attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty; second, brand personality is a stronger driver of identification among newer fans; and third, brand personality has a stronger influence on both attitudinal and behavioral loyalty among newer fans. These findings stress the importance of sports brand’s personality in driving fans’ identification with the team and their loyalty to it. Originality/value – The study develops and tests a new conceptual model on consumer loyalty in the sports team context. The authors shed light on how sports team personality affects its fans’ identification with the team and the formation of fan loyalty, from the perspective of fans’ relationship length.

scholarly journals Sport Fans’ Price Sensitivity Based on Loyalty Levels: A Case of Korean Professional Baseball League

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 3361
Author(s):  
Jung-Sup Bae ◽  
Weisheng Chiu ◽  
Sang-Back Nam
Keyword(s):  
Price Sensitivity ◽  
Professional Baseball ◽  
Pricing Strategies ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Behavioral Loyalty ◽  
Attitudinal Loyalty ◽  
Ticket Price ◽  
Sport Fans ◽  
Price Range ◽  
Practical Implications

For the sustainable development of the Korean Professional Baseball League (a.k.a., KBO League), it is critical to propose profitable and efficient pricing strategies for each team in the KBO League. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to understand KBO League fans’ perceptions of price sensitivity. More specifically, this study explored how fans’ perceptions of price sensitivity and latitude of price acceptance vary between different loyalty groups. A total of 213 valid responses were recruited from KBO League fans by using a convenience sampling approach. As a result, based on the levels of attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty, fans were classified into four categories: loyal fans, latent fans, spurious fans, and indifferent fans. Moreover, loyal fans were found to be less sensitive to the ticket price increase of different levels (i.e., 10%, 20%, and 30%), followed by latent fans, spurious fans, and indifferent fans. Meanwhile, loyal fans have the highest level of the latitude of price acceptance, followed by latent fans, spurious fan, and indifferent fans. The findings of this study contribute to a better understanding of sport fans’ responses to the change of ticket price and their perceptions of the accepted price range. Meanwhile, this study offers practical implications for marketers of KBO League teams to develop tailored pricing strategies for their fans by considering different loyalty levels.

Confronting the Problems of Professional Sports: A Public Policy Response to Franchise Relocation and Stadium Subsidization

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor F Brinkman
Keyword(s):  
Local Community ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
The United States ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Sports Organizations ◽  
Sports Leagues ◽  
Sports Finance ◽  
Sports Venues ◽  
Benefits And Costs

During the past decade, forty-six professional sports venues were constructed in the United States, while only 16 expansion teams were created by the major sports leagues. Nearly two thirds of these newly built stadiums and arenas were funded with public tax revenues, despite substantial evidence showing no positive economic impact of new sports stadium construction on local communities. In reviewing the economic literature, this article investigates the role of professional sports organizations in the construction and public subsidization of new sports venues. Franchise relocation and public stadium subsidization is a direct result of the monopoly power of professional sports leagues, whose franchise owners extract large subsidies from their host communities by threatening to relocate to viable alternative locations. After explaining how the most common methods of stadium subsidization project a disproportionate allocation of the benefits and costs of hosting a professional team to local community interests, this article outlines several considerations for local policymakers who seek to reinvigorate public discussion of equity concerns in professional sports finance.

The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players: The Origins of Professional Baseball and the American Identity

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
National Association ◽  
American Values ◽  
Primary Documents ◽  
American Tradition ◽  
Formative Experience ◽  
The 19Th Century

Baseball has been proudly coined “the national pastime” for nearly its entire existence. The sport evolved from several English bat and ball games and quickly became part of the American identity in the 19th century. Only a few decades after the first baseball club formed in New York City, amateur clubs began to organize into loose confederations as competition and glory entered a game originally associated with fraternal leisure. Soon after, clubs with enough fans and capital began to pay players for their services and by 1871 and league of solely professionals emerged. Known as The National Professional Base Ball Players Association, this league would only last five seasons but would lay the groundwork for the American tradition of professional sports that exists today. In this paper, I analyze the development of the sport of baseball into a professional industry alongside the concurrent industrialization and urbanization of the United States. I used primary documents from the era describing the growing popularity of the sport as well as modern historians’ accounts of early baseball. In addition, I rely on sources focusing on the changing American identity during this period known as The Gilded Age, which many attribute to be the beginnings of the modern understanding of American values. Ultimately, I conclude that baseball’s progression into a professional league from grassroots origins compared to a broader trend of the ideal American being viewed as urban, skilled, and affluent despite the majority not able to fit this characterization. How certain attributes become inherent to a group identity and the types of individuals able to communicate these messages are also explored. My analysis of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players provides insight on the formative experience of the modern collective American identity and baseball’s place in it as our national pastime.

Creating Loyal Prosocial Transformative Service Consumers: A Proposed Model With Direct and Indirect Effects

2021 ◽  
pp. 183933492199851
Author(s):  
Rory Mulcahy ◽  
Rebekah Russell-Bennett ◽  
Jo Previte
Keyword(s):  
Indirect Effects ◽  
Blood Donation ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Service Research ◽  
Direct And Indirect Effects ◽  
Behavioral Loyalty ◽  
Attitudinal Loyalty ◽  
Consumer Value ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
Important Extension

Understanding transformative services, where the consumer is not the primary well-being beneficiary, is fundamental to furthering the transformative service research (TSR) paradigm. Furthermore, it is imperative to understand the co-creation behaviors consumers can partake in during prosocial transformative services to improve their service experience and, ultimately, their repeat usage of the service. This study is one of the first to develop a model drawing together three key service frameworks (co-creation behavior, service quality, and consumer value), which is empirically validated using real consumers of a prosocial transformative service, namely blood donation. In addition, a key strength of the study is the objective measurement of behavioral loyalty using organizational records, which is an important extension to prior TSR studies that often measure attitudinal loyalty (behavioral intentions) as a proxy. The findings have important implications for furthering transformative scholars’ and practitioners’ understanding of how services can improve individual and societal well-being.

Financial Returns in Major League Soccer

2021 ◽  
pp. 152700252110227
Author(s):  
John Charles Bradbury
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Ownership Structure ◽  
North American ◽  
Consumer Demand ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
The United States ◽  
Professional Soccer ◽  
Major League Soccer ◽  
Major League ◽  
Sports Leagues

Major League Soccer (MLS) is the top-tier professional soccer league serving the United States and Canada. This study examines factors hypothesized to impact consumer demand for professional sports on team revenue in this nascent league. The estimates are consistent with positive returns to performance, novelty effects from newer teams, and varying impacts from roster quality and composition. Other factors hypothesized to be important for MLS teams (e.g., stadium quality and market demographics) are not associated with team revenue. The estimates are similar to findings in other major North American sports leagues, even though MLS operates with a unique single-entity ownership structure that has the potential to disincentivize individual team investments by league owners.

Predicting Behavioral Loyalty through Community: Why Other Fans Are More Important Than Our Own Intentions, Our Satisfaction, and the Team Itself

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 318-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masayuki Yoshida ◽  
Bob Heere ◽  
Brian Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Intentions ◽  
Consumer Satisfaction ◽  
Team Identification ◽  
Half Time ◽  
Community Attachment ◽  
Behavioral Loyalty ◽  
Sport Team ◽  
Professional Soccer ◽  
Actual Attendance ◽  
The Impact

A consumer’s loyalty to a specific sport team is longitudinal in nature. This longitudinal study examines the effects of consumers’ attitudinal constructs (team identification, associated attachment points, consumer satisfaction, and behavioral intentions) on behavioral loyalty in the context of a professional soccer event. To test the proposed relationships, the authors assess the impact of consumers’ self-reported measures (Time 1) on actual attendance frequency in the first half (Time 2) and the second half (Time 3) of the season. The results indicate that fan community attachment is the only construct that can predict attendance frequency over a longer period of time while team identification, satisfaction and behavioral intentions are not significant predictors of attendance frequency throughout the season. The theoretical model and results reinforce the importance of fan community attachment toward longitudinal attendance frequency and add new insights into the predictive validity of some of the attitudinal marketing measures in the field of sport management.

Chinese Translation: A Vehicle of Cultural Influence

PMLA ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 130 (2) ◽  
pp. 488-499
Author(s):  
Eileen Chang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Information Service ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Influence ◽  
Chinese Translation ◽  
Eileen Chang ◽  
Zhang Ailing ◽  
Communist Revolution

Translation played a central role in the life of Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing, 1920-95). One of the most iconic figures in twentieth-century Chinese literature, Chang also wrote extensively in English throughout her career, which began in the early 1940s in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. She achieved fame quickly but fell into obscurity after the war ended in 1945. Chang stayed in Shanghai through the 1949 Communist revolution and in 1952 moved to Hong Kong, where she worked as a freelance translator and writer for the United States Information Service and wrote two anti-Communist novels in English and Chinese, The Rice-Sprout Song (1955) and Naked Earth (1956).

scholarly journals Sport Spectatorship and Life Satisfaction: A Multicountry Investigation

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuhei Inoue ◽  
Mikihiro Sato ◽  
Kevin Filo ◽  
James Du ◽  
Daniel C. Funk
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Life Satisfaction ◽  
Emotional Support ◽  
Positive Association ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Professional Sport ◽  
Team Identification ◽  
Sport Events ◽  
Satisfaction Relationship

Elite and professional sport events have been recognized as potential mechanisms to enhance well-being. This multicountry study investigates how engagement in such events, behaviorally through live spectating and psychologically through team identification, is associated with life satisfaction. Data from Australia (N = 268) revealed a positive association between live spectating and life satisfaction through a two-wave design measuring live spectating and life satisfaction in separate surveys. Data from the United States (N = 564) confirmed the live spectating–life satisfaction relationship found in Study 1. Additionally, Study 2 revealed individuals with higher levels of team identification perceived greater emotional support from other fans, and this perception, in turn, predicted life satisfaction. Our findings provide sport managers with implications for positioning appeals in support of sport programs and designing events that facilitate engagement to promote life satisfaction in the community.

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