Grow tennis in China : How to popularize professional tennis tournaments in China through customer engagement

As a highly commercialized sport, tennis is growing rapidly in the Chinese market. With robust economic growth and various supports from the government, China is becoming more and more valuable in the eyes of professional tennis tournament organizers. Nevertheless, those tournaments do not receive the same amount of popularity as they do in other countries like US and Japan. The purpose of this paper is finding effective ways to improve the popularity of professional tennis tournaments in China from the aspect of customer engagement. Comments from people who are closely involved in the events will be the most relevant empirical material for this study, because they are the group engaged in, or most likely to be engaged in the event. The comments collected will be coded and compared with theories in the field of customer engagement. A conceptual model and practical suggestions will be provided as the result of study