Newswise — MANHATTAN, Kan. -- Corporations, nonprofits and governmental agencies often sponsor sporting events for differing reasons, but is it an effective practice? A study by a Kansas State University marketing expert and undergraduate student has helped determine what's a perfect fit when it comes to such sponsorships.
"It's important to truly understand your market. You have to ask yourself if your audience is similar to the audience of the event you're sponsoring. There's a reason that Gatorade doesn't sponsor the National Spelling Bee," said Tyler Johnson, sophomore in marketing, Parsons. "You can save a lot of time and money if you consider that background information first."
Johnson and Kevin Gwinner, professor and head of the department of marketing, examined the congruence or fit of the sponsoring organization and the event. The congruence was measured to determine its impact on important consumer outcome variables, such as intention to purchase or perception of sponsor motives. The duo's study was completed for Johnson's Developing Scholars Program research and was a continuation of Gwinner's research in sports sponsorship.
"A lot of the studies that I've published look at sponsor-event fit and does that fit have an impact on things like consumers' attitudes toward the sponsor and their intentions to purchase the brand," Gwinner said. "What has been missing is an examination of different types of fit. People tend to recognize fit, but our goal was to explicitly delineate different fit types and see if their influence varied."
Gwinner and Johnson used three types of fit in conducting their study: image, geographic and audience. Each type of fit was operationalized in one of three different newspaper stories about the sponsorship. In one story, audience fit matched NCAA women's volleyball with Dove. Geographic fit paired Jack Daniels Distillery and the Kentucky Derby. The third story used Rolex and the World Figure Skating Champions for image fit. After the experiment subjects -- 182 undergraduate students at K-State -- were exposed to a particular fit type, the consumer variables of interest were measured.
Fit was identifiable, regardless of the pairing, for all subjects. Attitude toward the company was mostly unchanged except for image fit, which caused a significant increase. Conversely, audience and geographic fit increased purchase intentions while image fit caused no change.
Perceptions of a company's motive for sponsorship were also analyzed. Many subjects expressed that the motivation for sponsorship centered on company benefits, suggesting a lack of perceived sincerity about event sponsorship.
"Some consumers are not excited about companies sponsoring the sporting events they love. They believe the purity of the sport is compromised by crass commercialization," Gwinner said. "It turns out that the fit variable can actually mitigate that: the stronger the fit, the lower the perception of commercialization."
Prominent examples of the types of fit are visible in the Major League Baseball All-Star Game. Chevrolet, a consistent league sponsor, provides a tough image shared by many players in the game. Arizona tourism commercials will likely be included, serving as a geographic fit for the Phoenix-based game. Pepsi and Taco Bell are among the sponsors that resonate with the target audience.
Gwinner would like to increase the amount of subjects for the study.
"Our goal is to ultimately be able to say that a particular fit type will have a larger influence than another fit type," Gwinner said. "Some conditions are probably going to be associated with fit effectiveness, so we would like to be able to report under which circumstances a particular fit type might be more beneficial than other fit types."
The benefits are twofold, according to Gwinner.
"Companies have a limited amount of sponsorship dollars," Gwinner said. "This research can help inform allocation decisions for companies. On the event side, it will help them to target specific types of potential sponsors that will have the fit they are seeking."
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