Index of Paper Presentations for the Parallel Sessions - Academy of ...

QuickTime and adecompressorare needed to see this picture.Overall, the modified structural model fit the sample data as it satisfies the goodness of fit, reliability, convergentvalidity, and discriminant validity criteria.Discussion of the ResultsThe purpose of this research was to validate the SBBE model in context of television viewers and it represents oneof the first efforts to validate the SBBE model in context of television viewers in IPL. It was found that the SBBEmodel could not be applied directly to measure the brand equity of sports teams in context of television viewers as itneeds some modifications. We focused on brand equity from services perspective in this research and the use ofstructural equation modeling indicated a reasonable fit of the data to the modified SBBE model. Importantly, thisempirical research supports for brand associations and brand awareness as the important constructs for assessing thespectator based brand equity as suggested by Ross (2006) and Ross, Russell and Bang 2008). Many dimensionspredict their respective second order latent variables. Brand associations dimension was strongly predicted by teamrivalry (0.83) and team success (0.77). Interestingly, the unity and co-ordination between the players of the team andthe determination and passion of the players for winning the matches for their teams can be suggested for predictingthe reliability of the team. The past performance of the team and previous records of the team also help in buildingbrand-equity. However, brand mark (0.44) was not found to be a strong predictor of brand associations. This is asper the results of Ross, Russell, and Bang (2008) where the logo of the team was found to be a weak predictor ofbrand associations. It may be due to the fact that television viewers are interested only in the three-hourentertainment rather than being very particular about the brand logos‟ or the brand mark of the teams.The important thing to note here is that the organization has control over the decision regarding the brand mark,which we found to be insignificant for television viewers but the management does not have any control overdecisions regarding team success, and team rivalry which were significant predictors of brand associations. Themanagement of the team(s) should select their players very cautiously and the coaches and managers should alwaystry to cultivate harmonious relations between the players who happen to be from different countries or regions. Theteam (s) should look like a single and united team during and after the matches. Also, there should exist a strongbonding between the player (s) and this bonding should be reflected inside as well as outside the stadiums. Aspredicted earlier by Ross, Russell and Bang (2008) the two factors, brand identification and internalization werefound to be highly predictive of brand awareness.Findings of this study can be used for better managing and marketing the team(s) as a sport brand. The managementof the IPL team (s) can gain important insights from the research and can take wise management decisions fordeveloping the brand equity of the team(s) e.g buying celebrity players and developing a close bonding betweenthem inside and outside the stadiums would make it easy for the people to associate the team as a strong and unitedteam. Efforts of the management should be made to select, recruit, train, and make the player(s) learn the importanceof knowing each other and playing as a team. This will result in improving the performance of the team whichultimately influences the success in the long-term.Another important finding that came out of the research was that television viewers don‟t bother about the owner (s)of the team (s). Their presence or absence from the team does not have any impact on the brand-equity of the teambut the presence of the celebrity player(s) in the team can make a big difference. The mere inclusion of the celebrityplayer (s) can create positive word-of-mouth/publicity for the team, thus, making the team as one of the topcontender to be in the consideration set of the favorite team(s) of the viewers. It does not matter much whether thecelebrity player is playing for the team or not but his mere presence in the team gives a new energy to the team e.gduring the champions trophy of T-20 cricket, the only presence of sachin tendulkar in the team stands boosted theplayers and the team emerged as the winner of the tournament contributing to the brand-equity of the team in thelong-term.