Mark P. Pritchard and Christopher M. Negro
This paper examines the effectiveness of a sport loyalty program in fostering fan relationships with a team and its sponsors. The study of 268 US baseball spectators revealed…
Abstract
This paper examines the effectiveness of a sport loyalty program in fostering fan relationships with a team and its sponsors. The study of 268 US baseball spectators revealed that, in the mind of the fan, loyalty programs generally consist of three underlying components. When these components perform well, they can fuel a member's sense of attachment to a team and their tendency to purchase sponsor products. Recommendations to improve loyalty program performance focus on tactics that build member relationships and identification with the team.
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Mark P. Pritchard, Daniel C. Funk and Kostas Alexandris
The reason patrons cease to attend sporting events is not well understood. The purpose of this paper is to examine how factors motivate and inhibit patronage from continuing.
Abstract
Purpose
The reason patrons cease to attend sporting events is not well understood. The purpose of this paper is to examine how factors motivate and inhibit patronage from continuing.
Design/methodology/approach
A random sample of a sport franchise's fan database (n=308) is drawn. First, respondent data refines measures and tests a structural equation model of direct and indirect links to patronage. Next, content analysis classifies spectators according to self‐stated barriers to continuance. These groupings then check the moderating role constraints have on patron attitude and behaviour.
Findings
Structural work confirms both direct and indirect links but notes that consumption primarily took an indirect route, with motivational desires rousing fan involvement and media use before increasing attendance. Group differences verify constraints and limit patronage but do not dampen product‐related attitude.
Research limitations/implications
The study helps clarify the connection between media use and attendance, describing how constraints impede spectator consumption. Study limitations include a focus on one hedonic service setting and the use of cross‐sectional data to examine ongoing phenomena.
Practical implications
Negotiating barriers to repeat purchase remains largely overlooked as a foundation for guiding strategy. Practical implications consider integrating both motives and constraints when marshalling efforts that build continuance.
Originality/value
Despite early interest from marketing practitioners, factors that inhibit patronage have drawn little attention. This study employs content and path analysis to address the matter.
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Mark P. Pritchard and Daniel C. Funk
Current research has largely overlooked importance as a meta‐attitude consumers develop from related judgments. Drawing from observations by consumer theorists and attitude…
Abstract
Purpose
Current research has largely overlooked importance as a meta‐attitude consumers develop from related judgments. Drawing from observations by consumer theorists and attitude strength researchers, the present study seeks to investigate the formation and effect of attitude importance in an experiential setting, spectator sport.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adapts a stimulus‐response framework to conduct a structural examination of attitude importance. The investigation includes a multi‐stage sampling procedure that distributed surveys to spectators attending five professional sport matches (n=370).
Findings
Path analysis of a multiple indicator‐multiple cause (MIMIC) model revealed that perceptions of technical and functional aspects of the service experience fuel a meta‐attitude of importance. When evident in dual judgments of product interest and brand importance, the construct is able to play a significant role in patron responses.
Research limitations/implications
These findings offer insight on the nature of importance and its role in moderating spectator behavior. Support for the structural sequence also holds implications for researchers interested in delineating other strong attitudes. However, study findings are limited to hedonic service consumers and await replication in other product settings.
Practical implications
Practical implications consider different mixes of dual judgments and strategies organizations might use to leverage a meta‐attitude of importance in their patrons. Examples of scenario‐based challenges to managing this disposition in the sport industry and in other consumer contexts are discussed.
Originality/value
Despite early attention by marketing practitioners on the importance of individual product features, explanations of how a larger meta‐attitude forms and affects customers are rare. The study developed a MIMIC model and used path analysis to address the matter.
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President Bill Clinton has had many opponents and enemies, most of whom come from the political right wing. Clinton supporters contend that these opponents, throughout the Clinton…
Abstract
President Bill Clinton has had many opponents and enemies, most of whom come from the political right wing. Clinton supporters contend that these opponents, throughout the Clinton presidency, systematically have sought to undermine this president with the goal of bringing down his presidency and running him out of office; and that they have sought non‐electoral means to remove him from office, including Travelgate, the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster, the Filegate controversy, and the Monica Lewinsky matter. This bibliography identifies these and other means by presenting citations about these individuals and organizations that have opposed Clinton. The bibliography is divided into five sections: General; “The conspiracy stream of conspiracy commerce”, a White House‐produced “report” presenting its view of a right‐wing conspiracy against the Clinton presidency; Funding; Conservative organizations; and Publishing/media. Many of the annotations note the links among these key players.
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Colleen C. Bee and Mark E. Havitz
Consumer loyalty has long been recognised as a key consideration of marketing strategies focused on customer retention. While the importance of the loyalty construct is widely…
Abstract
Consumer loyalty has long been recognised as a key consideration of marketing strategies focused on customer retention. While the importance of the loyalty construct is widely recognised, the conditions and variables that foster consumer loyalty for a specific service may vary. This paper explores the variables that influence fan attendance at a professional sporting event. It extends prior research by conceptualising both a behavioural and an attitudinal component of loyalty, as well as considering fan involvement with the sport and attraction to the sport. The findings suggest that psychological commitment and resistance to change mediate the effect of fan attraction and involvement on behavioural loyalty in a professional sports context.
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Elena Marchiori and Lorenzo Cantoni
This chapter outlines an augmented reality project developed as part of a master’s course on eTourism within a curriculum. It discusses opportunities to foster community…
Abstract
This chapter outlines an augmented reality project developed as part of a master’s course on eTourism within a curriculum. It discusses opportunities to foster community engagement with local tourism actors and experiential learning for international students. It also contributes to the literature on experiential education in this field. Moreover, the chapter discusses cross-cultural learning implications as international students were asked to study a local destination. Results show how the introduction of a practical project into the tourism curriculum proved to provide better learning of the application of eTourism, and a powerful pedagogical approach to raise global citizenship awareness.
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This chapter engages cosmopolitan and feminist paradigms of knowledge production through their shared ethics of social justice, equality, and diversity, promoting integration into…
Abstract
This chapter engages cosmopolitan and feminist paradigms of knowledge production through their shared ethics of social justice, equality, and diversity, promoting integration into an emerging postdisciplinary focus on embodied cosmopolitanism(s) as a promising way forward in tourism studies. Cosmopolitan paradigms theorize the dialectics of cultural diversity and universal rights, while feminist cosmopolitanism focuses on gender and sexuality equality and difference within this intersection. An embodied approach combines work on “the body” and “situated embodiment” with the cosmopolitan to embrace all human differences and acknowledge that the researchers’ own embodied cosmopolitanism affects research questions, ethics, and praxis toward transformation in research communities and the academy.
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The institution of food and cookery exhibitions and the dissemination of practical knowledge with respect to cookery by means of lectures and demonstrations are excellent things…
Abstract
The institution of food and cookery exhibitions and the dissemination of practical knowledge with respect to cookery by means of lectures and demonstrations are excellent things in their way. But while it is important that better and more scientific attention should be generally given to the preparation of food for the table, it must be admitted to be at least equally important to insure that the food before it comes into the hands of the expert cook shall be free from adulteration, and as far as possible from impurity,—that it should be, in fact, of the quality expected. Protection up to a certain point and in certain directions is afforded to the consumer by penal enactments, and hitherto the general public have been disposed to believe that those enactments are in their nature and in their application such as to guarantee a fairly general supply of articles of tolerable quality. The adulteration laws, however, while absolutely necessary for the purpose of holding many forms of fraud in check, and particularly for keeping them within certain bounds, cannot afford any guarantees of superior, or even of good, quality. Except in rare instances, even those who control the supply of articles of food to large public and private establishments fail to take steps to assure themselves that the nature and quality of the goods supplied to them are what they are represented to be. The sophisticator and adulterator are always with us. The temptations to undersell and to misrepresent seem to be so strong that firms and individuals from whom far better things might reasonably be expected fall away from the right path with deplorable facility, and seek to save themselves, should they by chance be brought to book, by forms of quibbling and wriggling which are in themselves sufficient to show the moral rottenness which can be brought about by an insatiable lust for gain. There is, unfortunately, cheating to be met with at every turn, and it behoves at least those who control the purchase and the cooking of food on the large scale to do what they can to insure the supply to them of articles which have not been tampered with, and which are in all respects of proper quality, both by insisting on being furnished with sufficiently authoritative guarantees by the vendors, and by themselves causing the application of reasonably frequent scientific checks upon the quality of the goods.
Richard Ek and Mekonnen Tesfahuney
In the Western thought tradition, the tourist has not been a subject worthy of intellectual musings and philosophical deliberations. Indeed, the tourist has been portrayed in…
Abstract
In the Western thought tradition, the tourist has not been a subject worthy of intellectual musings and philosophical deliberations. Indeed, the tourist has been portrayed in primarily derisive ways. Nietzsche’s remark, “Tourists—they climb mountains like animals, stupid and perspiring, no one has told them that there are beautiful views on the way,” epitomizes the dominant attitude. Why does the figure of the tourist elicit such negative reactions? Do the sentiments perhaps imply something else, or is the tourist a doppelgänger, not anomalous or marginal but normative—a paradigmatic figure? If so, then what can be said of the poetics and politics of the tourist conceptualized as a paradigmatic subject?