How do sponsorship deal terminations affect the attitudes of fans toward the sponsor? (PDF)

Diploma Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Sport - Sport Economics, Sport Management, grade: 1, University of Innsbruck (Institut für Strategisches Management, Marketing und Tourismus Fakultät für Betriebswirtschaft), language: English, abstract: Sponsorship is a business relationship between a provider of funds, resources or services and an individual, event or organisation which offers in return rights and association that may be used for commercial advantage in return for the sponsorship investment (BDS Sponsorship 2011). As sponsors, organisations are increasing their expenditures on sponsorships with the goal to transfer positive feelings consumers have toward a property onto the sponsor's brand in order to increase brand awareness, to establish, strengthen or change brand image as well as to achieve consumer gratitude (Cornwell and Maignan 1998, Crimmins and Horn 1996, Gwinner 1997, Gwinner and Eaton 1999, Speed and Thompson 2000). Previous research has focused on the early stages of a sponsorship relationship and the effects on consumers. However, few attempts have been made so far to study the impact on fan behaviour resulting from a termination of the sponsorship relationship between a sponsor and the sponsored property (i.e. a sports team). In the last years and months, a couple of firms decided to terminate sponsorship deals; Toyota, for example, withdrew its Formula One Teams in 2010 (Formula One 2009), Red Bull pulled out of NASCAR (Blount 2011) and the German bank Sparkasse terminated the sponsorship deal with the German soccer team Fortuna Düsseldorf (Zschoche, Otte and Offermanns 2010). Sponsorship withdrawals and therefore utilized strategies are gaining importance as sponsors have to deal with possible problems following the termination of a sponsorship deal. While the termination might result out of reasonable causes for the sponsoring organisation, it might have unfavourable impacts on a sponsor's image, as well as on fans attitudes, particularly when the termination is perceived as unjustified.
There is a gap that needs to be addressed, as little interest has been dedicated toward sponsorship deal terminations (Cornwell 2008)...