Sport Management

Sport Management

As part of consumer behavior, sport buyer behavior is of special interest to sport marketers and managers. However, it goes beyond fan behavior as it incorporates other aspects of interest to marketers, such as ticket sales, sports events viewership, and sales of sports team licensed products, such as footwear, sports apparel, and collectables having the brand name, logo, or markers of a team, in addition to promotion via sports celebrity endorsements and corporate sponsorship. The distinction between a sports fan and a sports consumer is difficult to make. They coincide; where the sports fan is in fact a consumer of sports, be it in terms of viewership, attendance at events, or distant spectatorship via television, radio, or Internet, or as a customer of sports-related objects.

Patterns of Consumption

Sports buyers or fans exhibit peculiar attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors toward sports subjects, events, and objects. They form certain attachments to events or championships, leagues, teams, games, and other sports objects, including both material objects and personalities (e.g., coaches) and become devoted to those sports objects. A studied antecedent of sport buyer behavior is identification with a player or sport, which can lead to forming a connection with a team or league that in turn translates to behaviors such as purchase of tickets and attendance at events, fanatical spectatorship, and purchase of related sports items (Stewart, 2003).

Types of Sport Buyer Behavior

There are various classifications of sports buying behavior for sports fans. In terms of sports purchases, some consumers are found to exhibit features of impulse buying tendencies for a number of reasons. Emotional devotion and identification with a sports figure or team can initiate compulsive attitudes and actions from fans. In addition, the way sports merchandise is exhibited in distribution channels may help stimulate impulse purchase propensities. In a segmentation of sports buying behavior on the basis of gender, some studies on female sports consumers characterize this segment as a potentially promising one (Trail, 2008).

Social Media and Online Marketing

Increasingly, many sports viewers and spectators see themselves as socially active buyers of sport in the sense that they not only wish to have their voices heard in a crowd but also wish to share and showcase their skills and creativity online as many are now media-savvy (Hunt, 1999). Some sponsors of sport recognize this and are making use of social media to let individuals of all backgrounds share their ideas and talents with the world, for example, by holding contests in which participants can upload creative user-generated video content showcasing their own skill in a particular sport. Such marketing approaches, which may also include online voting or voting by a panel of judges, tap into an in-depth knowledge of sport buyer behavior by not only providing sports consumers of all backgrounds with opportunities for a greater sense of personal ownership for their particular sport of interest, but also highly tangible opportunities for increased engagement (Funk, 2009).

Conclusion

In utilizing an understanding of factors influencing or motivating sports consumption, marketers may find general facets of sports-related behavior ...