Customer retention in sports organization marketing: examining the impact of team identification and satisfaction with team performance

Abstract

Over the past two decades, relationship marketing efforts have assumed a prominent role in sports organization marketing. A sports organization that successfully implements relationship marketing programmes is able to develop long-term relationships with its fans, thus increasing the likelihood of customer retention. This study examines customer retention in sports organization marketing by considering the impact of team identification and satisfaction with team performance on four fan consumption behaviours: in-person attendance, media-based attendance, purchase of team merchandise and word-of-mouth communication related to the team. Survey data were collected from 300 fans of more than 40 professional and collegiate teams involved in seven sports. Results suggest that both team identification and satisfaction with team performance impact multiple consumption behaviours, as represented by fans' intentions to engage in future consumption. Team identification was found to have the greater impact on consumption behaviours, suggesting that a sports organization's continuing efforts to bond with its fans may provide greater benefits than efforts to improve the team's competitive performance.

A longitudinal study of team-fan role identity on self-reported attendance behavior and future intentions

“…The shared variance between preseason Role Identity and preseason intentions to attend was 22%, whereas it was 27% between postseason Role Identity and future likelihood, indicating the impact of other factors in the model influenced the path coefficients. These results supported previous research (Bodet & BernacheAssollant, 2011;Gray & Wert-Gray, 2012;Matsuoka et al, 2003;Shapiro et al, 2013) and identity theory (Stryker & Burke, 2000).…”

“…This indicates that these two variables were distinct enough that they should be measured separately, even though they were highly correlated (r = .783; Table 2). This is similar to what Gray and Wert-Gray (2012) found when running separate regressions on attendance intentions, merchandise consumption intentions, media consumption intentions, and word-ofmouth intentions.…”

“…In addition, Gray and Wert-Gray (2012) separated conative loyalty into in-person attendance intentions, media-based consumption intentions, team-merchandise consumption intentions, and word-ofmouth communication intentions. Role identity (TII) explained 10%, 11%, 24% and 38% of the variance in each respectively across four separate regression analyses.…”

“…Zhang et al (2003) found that the number of games attended in the prior season and to that point during the current season was related to the number of games intending to attend the rest of the season and the next season. Although as far as we can tell, no one has directly tested the relationship between past behavior and intentions to support the team, as noted above, intentions to attend games and intentions to support the team may differ (Gray & Wert-Gray, 2012;Trail et al, 2005). Based on this information we formed Hypothesis 7:…”

Sports scores, financial and administrative variables on the financial performance of football clubs

“…Llama la atención igualmente la peculiaridad en torno a los aficionados que seguirían a estos clubes, ya que son un tipo de consumidores del espectáculo deportivo, los cuales no abandonan a su equipo bajo ninguna circunstancia (Gray & Wert-Gray, 2012;Tapp, 2003), siendo esto una base fundamental para la política de gestión de los clubes (Giulianotti, 1999;Henry & Lee, 2004). Igualmente, será un atributo distintivo sobre la gestión la circunstancia de que el sistema de competición existente en la Liga es de carácter abierto, permitiendo ascensos y descensos de categoría frente a otro tipo de competiciones de carácter cerrado, más propias de Estados Unidos (Hoehn & Szymanski, 1999).…”