Sports Marketing & Sponsorship - FIFA/CIES International University ...

Can sponsorships be harmful for events?post-test-only experimental design was utilised wherewe altered the sponsoring brand keeping everythingelse constant.We prepared two almost identical newspaper articlesabout the event, which differed only in the brand thatwas mentioned as the key sponsor. Two brands wereselected based on a strong profile and their expecteddivergent contrasts in terms of elicited associations. Thefirst brand, Quiksilver, is a winter sporting goodsmanufacturer and was likely to have manycomplementary associations in reference to the event.The second brand, KPN, a telecommunicationsprovider, was chosen in the belief that it did not have asstrong a complementary association fit with the event.The respondents were randomly assigned to eitherone of two experimental groups. We measured therespondents’ association with the event as well as withthe sponsor by means of the attributes ‘tough’,‘boring’, ‘sporty’, ‘young’, ‘cosy’, ‘alternative’, ‘formal’,‘old fashioned’, ‘reliable’ and ‘slow’, because the pretestrevealed these were the relevant associationsworth exploring.The results indicate that the image of a sponsor hasan impact on the image of the sponsee and can eitherenhance or damage an event.The findings are of importance to both sponsees andsponsors. The sponsees must be very careful in therecruitment and selection of their sponsors. It isimportant for event organisers to understand and usethis knowledge of association transfer as an imagebuilding tool in the same way sponsors do now.Sponsees must also be aware of possibleimplications for damage to their event image that canbe readily caused by sponsors with bad or dull imagesor are likely to experience a transgressional event.Sponsees should now realise that they need to attractappropriate sponsors that supplement their eventimage strengths and reinforce their existing eventweaknesses. If events can attract brands with asuitable image as their sponsor, they may also benefitfrom the positive image flow on effects. In such acase, the value of a sponsorship for the sponsee goesclearly beyond the sponsorship royalty.IntroductionSponsorship’s importance as a marketingcommunications tool has increased significantly incomparison to traditional advertising (Erodogan& Kitchen, 1998; Harvey, 2001) Amis et al (1999)argue that “a sponsorship agreement should beconsidered as a resource which, if carefully managed,can be developed into a distinctive competencecapable of producing a sustainable competitiveadvantage for a firm”. Sponsorship objectives vary andmay relate to a range of brand and strategic objectives(Farrelly & Quester, 2005a). As Cliffe and Motion(2005) point out, sponsoring can be useful to createbrand awareness and brand loyalty, and it is useful forthe creation of brand experience. According toGwinner & Eaton (1999), companies try to absorbpart of the image of a (sporting) event onto themselvesby becoming the official sponsor of the event. Theyhope that the consumer will link associations of theevent with associations of the sponsoring company,thereby transferring the image of the event to theimage of the sponsor (Cornwell et al, 2001; Javalgi etal, 1994; McDonald, 1991; Roy & Cornwell, 2003).Gwinner (1997) illustrated that this belief is justifiedbecause sponsorship does transfer associations fromthe sponsored entity (the sponsee) to the sponsor.Recently, a new stream has emerged withinsponsorship research, extending Cornwell andMaignan’s (1998) cartography of sponsorshipresearch. The relationship between sponsee andsponsor has been identified as a relationship typical ofa business-to-business relationship (Farrelly & Quester,2005a,b). This introduces other business-to-businessconstructs into the equation, such as the notion ofvalue creation and dissemination within thatrelationship from both parties’ perspectives.This paper adds to the literature by investigatingwhether a sponsorship can influence the image of asponsee. We will examine the transfer of associationsfrom a sponsor to a sponsee. By doing so, we willillustrate how sponsorships can create but also destroyvalue for the sponsee – beyond the sponsorship fee.RESEARCH PAPER● APRIL 2009 ● International Journal of Sports Marketing & Sponsorship245