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Sport is a global product and service that many people around the world enjoy playing, watching and participating in. Whilst there has been an abundance of global media attention on sporting events such as the Olympics and World Football Cup, there seems to be a lack of integration between the sports marketing and international business disciplines both from a practical and also academic standpoint. This paper aims to discuss international sport marketing and why it is an important attribute of business‐to‐business marketing.

The aim of the paper is to provide practical implications and research avenues for those seeking to further investigate international sport marketing as a unique area of academic research. The introduction to the paper focuses on the importance of sport to the global economy and how entrepreneurship is ingrained in many sport businesses and organizations. Next, different areas of international business management that relate to entrepreneurial sport marketing ventures are discussed in terms of future research directions and practical implications. These include how entrepreneurial sport ventures affect internationalization, branding, corporate social responsibility, tourism, regional development, marketing and action sports.

The paper concludes by finding that there are numerous research avenues for future research on international sport marketing that combine different areas of marketing together with the sport marketing and international business literature. In addition, there is enormous potential for linking the sports marketing and international business literature through focusing on entrepreneurial sport ventures that occur worldwide.

The authors demonstrate the need to take an international perspective of sports marketing and business‐to‐business relationships.

The paper discusses how and why sport firms interact in the international marketplace and how future competition will benefit from more sport‐based business‐to‐business partnerships.

The paper examines the important area of international sports marketing and how businesses that are both profit and non‐profit orientated collaborate. The paper explores the concept of international sports marketing, and discusses the practical and future research implications of this exciting new field of marketing research.

The purpose of this paper is to review the existing literature on sponsorship‐linked marketing and to present a set of research propositions.

The approach to the research propositions was to explore the existing literature to discover areas where opportunities for further research exist.

The authors propose that not only does sponsorship‐linked marketing influence attitudes towards the sponsor, but that the relationship is that of an S‐shaped curve where the incremental impact of sponsorship is slight for brands with very little or very strong attitudes established towards the brand. The most dramatic influence that sponsorship‐linked marketing will have is for those sponsors with a moderate amount of established brand attitude. The authors also present an argument that extreme congruity or extreme incongruity will drive brand awareness more dramatically than an expected level of sponsor‐property congruity, thus suggesting a U‐shaped relationship between awareness and congruency. Moreover, while an extremely incongruent partnership may gain widespread attention, it is unlikely to positively influence an emotional or behavioral response for either the property or sponsor.

The majority of the previous literature regarding sponsorship‐linked marketing proposed or assumed a linear relationship between current brand attitudes and the impact of a sponsorship. This paper suggests that this relationship is actually non‐linear and is, in fact, an S‐shaped relationship. Further, while congruency was believed to be linearly related to awareness, this paper proposes that the association between awareness and congruency is a U‐shaped phenomenon.

The purpose of the current study is to advance understanding of sponsorship effectiveness by investigating the impact of the quality of the relationship between a consumer and a sport property on sponsorship effectiveness.

A model was developed to examine linkages among relationship quality, sincerity, attitude toward sponsor and intention to purchase a sponsor's product. The measurement model was tested using confirmatory factory analysis. The relationships in the hypothesized model were tested using simultaneous equations.

The results indicate that positive attitude toward a sponsor and intention to purchase said sponsor's product(s) are more likely to occur among the customers who perceive a higher degree of relationship quality with the sport property and believe the sponsor motives are sincere.

A conceptual model of sponsorship effectiveness was developed and empirically tested. The tested model provides an expanded view of relationship quality and its impact on key variables of sponsorship effectiveness.

Provided in this study is a framework for both sponsors and sport teams that can be used to understand some of the ways in which sponsorship works. The findings suggest that sponsors should leverage their activities to communicate sincere motives, not just “doing business”. For the sport property, the implication is developing quality relationships with consumers, and being able to promote such relationships to prospective sponsors.

Relationship quality has been previously shown to influence various behavioral aspects related to partners in business‐to‐business relationships. This study extends the literature by examining the effect of business‐to‐consumer relationship quality on the expected outcomes associated with a business‐to‐business relationship.

This study seeks to examine how a sport league, a unique feature of professional sport, influences the business‐to‐business marketing of teams participating in the sport league.

This study uses a qualitative research design based on a single case study, the UCI ProTour in professional road cycling. The primary sources consist of 27 semi‐structured interviews complemented by written sources and controlled for construct validity, external validity and reliability.

From a theoretical point of view, a sport league is a marketing channel network (a specific type of an intentionally developed business network or IDBN). Theoretical analysis also reveals that the teams' business‐to‐business marketing is positively related to the network's value‐creating system. Empirically, it is argued that the introduction of a marketing channel network has a positive influence on the financial value of the teams' business‐to‐business market but does not result in a change in the business demographics of corporate sponsors.

The study has possible sport‐specific limitations.

Business‐to‐business marketers and sport league managers should pay attention to the characteristics of the sport league as these influence the teams' business‐to‐business market. This is especially valid for sports in which teams rely strongly on sport sponsoring and, to a lesser extend, on gate revenues, television rights and prize money.

For the first time, this study examines and provides data on the business‐to‐business environment of teams in professional road cycling. It contributes to the literature of international sport marketing and professional road cycling, a sport gaining momentum in various countries and which is understudied in comparison to other sports.

Using a stakeholder perspective, this paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of sponsorship as a business investment by assessing the impact of sponsorship announcements on the shareholders' reactions of the sponsoring firms. These reactions are examined in two different occasions: in an international mega sport event such as the Olympic Games and in sport organizations such as sport federations/associations.

Event study analysis by using multiple regression models and bootstrapping techniques were employed to study the effects of sponsorship announcements. The sample consisted of sponsors of the 2004 Olympic Games and sponsors of national sport federations.

Overall, the results of the study did not indicate any significant effects of sponsorship announcements on the stock prices of sponsoring firms, suggesting that shareholders' reactions to this business activity are limited.

This is the first research initiative that utilizes a stakeholder approach in examining sponsorship effectiveness. The findings provide evidence that shareholders do not perceive sport sponsorships as business investments due to limited information provided by the sponsoring firms. In addition to theoretical and practical implications, the study proposes a new methodological approach in evaluating the impact of sport sponsorship. Multiple regression models applying bootstrap techniques to avoid data distribution and small sample problems are recommended.

While various scholars have identified relationship marketing objectives as a rationale for sports sponsorship engagement, analytic investigations of the implications of a relational approach to the corporate sponsorship network have been slow to materialize. The purpose of this paper is to advance the discussion of sponsorship as a means of industrial sports marketing towards a network conceptualization, which can be dissected from both the perspective of the sponsoring firms and that of the sponsored enterprise.

This paper employs an illustrative case‐based approach to the application of network analysis tools as a means of exploring the relationship marketing dynamics of corporate sponsorship portfolios.

Several research propositions and applicable network analytics are presented within the context of Formula One racing team sponsorship portfolios. The concepts of network range, density, power, growth, and social capital are explored in regards to their influence on network actors and prospective actors.

Though often neglected in sponsorship research, B2B relational objectives are the focus of this paper, where various evaluative methods are suggested and their dynamic implications illustrated.

By utilizing an international contextual case and explicating several analytic network measures, this research extends the investigation of sports sponsorship beyond the image and awareness‐based objectives that have dominated this area of research. This application of social network analysis to the study of inter‐organizational networks in sport builds on the discussion of sponsorship as a bilateral relationship and advances the dialog towards a broader exploration of corporate sponsors and sport enterprises as network partners.

The aim of this paper is to understand the behavior that Australian youths have towards wireless application protocol (WAP) banking.

This paper is based on a quantitative study of the youth market in Australia. Social cognitive theory is utilized to support a conceptual model that is empirically tested.

The major finding from the research is that the conceptual model is partially supported which indicates the immaturity of WAP technology.

Social cognitive theory provides a useful explanation for youth's intentions to use WAP technology in the banking industry. The youth market is an early adopter of technology that presents a good indicator of future market potential.