“…However, Doyle et al (2013) advocated that that fan behaviour and fan identification are not fixed entities, and work by Thomas and Roeseler (2013) found fans to be fickle, capricious entities, wary of sponsors and reticent in relation to loyalty and commitment. This echoes work by Thomas (2018), who suggested that sponsorship does not always deepen bonds with fans, and we posit that these behaviours need to be explored in the context of children, as children make their own knowledge of the world around them (Agante and Pascoal, 2019).…”
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to evaluate children’s perceptions and attitudes towards sponsorship transition, specifically the change from Nike to PUMA as kit sponsors for Manchester City Football Club (MCFC) in July 2019.
Design/methodology/approach
A sample of 368 children, between 7 and 16 years of age were recruited for the study. Using electronic diaries, 1,577 diary entries were captured between February 2019 and March 2020.
Findings
Data reveals that children conceptualise sponsorship as a social exchange, with sponsoring brands seen as human entities and interaction with them reflecting the dynamism of social and familial relationships. Consequently, children in this study demanded prosocial and interpersonal behaviours from sponsors and sponsee during the transition period.
Research limitations/implications
The research has an immediate and direct application for brand managers and the sponsee when considering terminating long-term sponsorship. Both the departing and incoming sponsors can maximise their relationships with these younger fans through an orchestrated departure, arrival and dedicated handover.
Practical implications
The findings enable marketing brand managers to effectively evaluate sponsor transition to maximise opportunities to maintain, and indeed start, brand relationships with younger fans.
Originality/value
This is the first study that has examined sponsorship children’s responses to sponsorship transition.
“…However, Doyle et al (2013) advocated that that fan behaviour and fan identification are not fixed entities, and work by Thomas and Roeseler (2013) found fans to be fickle, capricious entities, wary of sponsors and reticent in relation to loyalty and commitment. This echoes work by Thomas (2018), who suggested that sponsorship does not always deepen bonds with fans, and we posit that these behaviours need to be explored in the context of children, as children make their own knowledge of the world around them (Agante and Pascoal, 2019).…”
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to evaluate children’s perceptions and attitudes towards sponsorship transition, specifically the change from Nike to PUMA as kit sponsors for Manchester City Football Club (MCFC) in July 2019.
Design/methodology/approach
A sample of 368 children, between 7 and 16 years of age were recruited for the study. Using electronic diaries, 1,577 diary entries were captured between February 2019 and March 2020.
Findings
Data reveals that children conceptualise sponsorship as a social exchange, with sponsoring brands seen as human entities and interaction with them reflecting the dynamism of social and familial relationships. Consequently, children in this study demanded prosocial and interpersonal behaviours from sponsors and sponsee during the transition period.
Research limitations/implications
The research has an immediate and direct application for brand managers and the sponsee when considering terminating long-term sponsorship. Both the departing and incoming sponsors can maximise their relationships with these younger fans through an orchestrated departure, arrival and dedicated handover.
Practical implications
The findings enable marketing brand managers to effectively evaluate sponsor transition to maximise opportunities to maintain, and indeed start, brand relationships with younger fans.
Originality/value
This is the first study that has examined sponsorship children’s responses to sponsorship transition.
“…Today, most consumers are driven to associate themselves with ethical brands to alleviate their feelings of guilt (Newman & Trump, 2017). Studies on guilt have also focused on why committed consumers comply with demanding brands, its ill‐effects (Zemack‐Rugar et al., 2017) and how casual fans driven by guilt engage with their favourite sports team (Thomas, 2018). Predominantly, studies on guilt in consumer–brand relationships have studied ethical branding, and consumers' motivation to associate with an ethical brand.…”
Emotions have a compelling and strong effect on individuals actions and behaviours. They are elicited in consumers during the decision‐making process through brand‐related stimuli. Negative emotions towards a brand can translate directly into actions against it, for instance, propagating negative word of mouth, avoidance and vengeance. Although scholars have conducted consumer–brand relationship (CBR) research for over 20 years, our understanding of negative emotions is still limited. Research in the consumer–brand relationship domain so far has predominantly focused on positive emotions and its constructs. However, with a recent surge in the studies on negative emotions in the consumer–brand relationship domain, a systematic review is essential to identify, evaluate and synthesize the extant literature. Using a citation‐based search, we analyse 55 articles in the literature to achieve three objectives: primarily to illustrate the evolution and growth of negative emotions in the consumer–brand relationship using the seminal article by Fournier (1998) ‘Consumers and their brands: Developing relationship theory in consumer research’ as the base paper. Further, the study aims to identify uncharted negative emotions in consumer–brand relationship literature by integrating it with the hierarchical theory of emotions article and finally, it suggests future research in unexplored and underexplored negative emotions.
“…During the analysis, we considered that these extracts represent a palpable indication of how community clubs socialized young fans to move away from the traditional football development, that is, the affective bond with the team (Thomas, 2015, 2018) into a more progressive and ultimately advanced mode of fandom that is partially based on the affective bond with the team, but enhanced by the affective bond with others. The following extract, from P15FCUM10F, clarifies this proposed paradigmatic shift: If we hadn't started coming here, I would never have got involved with Refugee Week […].…”
Community‐owned clubs are profound socializing agents that offer children a prosocial environment that disarticulates some of football's most pernicious ideologies in favor of an environment that is developmental, empowering, and self‐affirming while facilitating self‐determination. The work highlights the evolution of community‐owned clubs from activist enclaves to virtuous, imperative environments that influence and transfer community‐bound knowledge. Children in the study articulated that the ethos found at these clubs has enhanced their self‐esteem and self‐efficacy and has positively changed their perceptions, behavior, and interactions with the vulnerable individuals within their community. In addition, the data reveals a new idealism in terms of football with self‐restraint and nominal consumption of club apparel preferred to traditional materialism.
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