Evolving priorities in sponsorship: From media management to network management

Abstract

Commercial sponsorship has continually adapted to the needs of the market. The purpose of this paper is to tracks these changes and draw out the evolution in management capabilities required to manage sponsorship effectively. Five distinct approaches to sponsorship have been identified from an extensive review of the literature, including: the philanthropic approach, the market-centred approach, the consumer-centred approach, the strategic resource, and finally the relations and networks approach. By examining these approaches, the paper identifies key capabilities required for the future of sponsorship, including network visioning, network orchestration, and relationship portfolio management. This is presented in a four-level framework for sponsorship network management. This paper serves two key audiences. On the one hand, for sponsorship managers, it examines past and future capabilities required to manage sponsorship effectively. For researchers, the paper historically reviews the emergence of sponsorship capabilities and sets out a research agenda to progress our understanding on a network perspective on sponsorship.

Sponsor networks and business relations orchestrated by team sports clubs

“…The growth of sponsorships can be seen as an 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 u s i n e s s , M a n a g e m e n t : a n I n t e r n a t i o n a l J o 6 extension of traditional advertising. Accordingly, early contributions to sponsorship literature focused on how sponsorships could be regarded as a means of fulfilling classical marketing objectives such as product promotion and increasing consumer awareness (Ryan and Fahy, 2012). However, today sponsorships have multifaceted purposes such as human resource management (Farelly et al, 2012), city branding (Evens, 2003), or emphasizing corporate social responsibility (Flöter et al, 2016).…”

“…The design of sponsorships today seeks new ways to create value for the parties involved, which includes using networks as one of the more recent forms of establishing sponsor-sponsee relations (Ryan and Fahy, 2012). By investigating sponsorships in relation to network creation, this study unites a recent but hitherto scarcely exposed strand within sponsorship research literature with the business network literature.…”

“…More recently, study has been devoted to sponsorships as an arena of network management (Ryan and Fahy, 2012). Whilst the mainstream of B2B network research has either focused on traditional networks such as supply chain networks (Capó-Vicedo et al, 2011) or determined types of networks by using categories such as geographic proximity, same industry, interactions with intended business outcomes (Human and Provan, 1997;Wincent et al, 2010), B2B networking facilitated by professional team sport clubs has been neglected.…”

How Does Sponsorship Marketing in Korean Dramas Bring in Lucrative Business?

“…Sponsorship is a global phenomenon, with both sponsors and entities operating on an international stage, often with differing divisions of the same organization operating in different markets with different sponsorship objectives (Ryan & Fahy, 2012). Despite under such a complex condition, sponsorship marketing is still able to achieve success due to the irresistible benefits that it offers.…”

“…Therefore, sponsorship is a commercial event that exploits the relationship between the sponsors and sponsored in order to achieve marketing communications goal (Walliser, 2003;as cited in Schwaiger, Sarstedt & Taylor, 2010). Nonetheless, with the intervention and evolution of technology, today, the recognition of sponsorship is as a complex and inherently relational phenomenon characterized by multiple stakeholders (sponsor, sponsored activity, audience, media, government funders, etc) acting within a network (Olkkonen et al, 2000), comprising of multiple objectives (awareness, image, sales, resource sharing and development), as well as differing concepts as to what constitutes sponsorship value within the network itself (Farrelly & Quester, 2005b; as cited in Ryan & Fahy, 2012). In the eyes of sponsors, sponsorship provides a flexible platform for the communication and interaction between the numerous stakeholder groups as it is more strategic as a whole and often it is being compared with media advertising (Hastings, 1984;Hoek et al, 1997;McDonald, 1991;Meenaghan, 2001; as cited in Meenaghan, 2013).…”