An Investigation of Sport Sponsorship Antecedents and Outcomes through Levels of Sponsor Prominence

Currently, global sport sponsorship is a multi-billion dollar industry that continues to show strong year-to-year growth (IEG, 2016). Additionally, the current body of sport sponsorship literature has reported the effects of salient attitudinal and behavioral constructs on sponsorship effectiveness. For example, previous studies have indicated that the perceived sincerity and attitude toward a sponsor do positively effect a consumer\u27s behavioral intentions toward a sponsor (Speed & Thompson, 2000; Biscaia, Correia, Rosado, Ross, & Maroco, 2013). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to measure consumer attitudes and behavioral intent toward sponsor, through experimental design, when exposed to one of three hypothetical sponsorship scenarios. The hypothetical sponsors were classified by their level of national market prominence (e.g. national, regional, or local) and participants completed an online survey containing salient attitudinal and behavioral constructs. The final sample size was 1162 and were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk. The final MIMIC model exhibited data-model fit very well. Results indicated that local sponsors, when covaried by a hypothetical sponsor’s level of national market prominence, were the best predictor of consumer attitudes and behavioral intent