Ambush Marketing Strategies’ Misleading Influence on Consumers

Event marketing and sponsorship is considered to be a top opportunity of marketing for a company. With help from these phenomenas, companies can reach out to a great number of people and achieve their stated objectives. Another and a rather new phenomenon in marketing is ambush marketing. Ambush marketing occurs when a company aims to look like it is an official sponsor by making advertisements and promotions that can be related to a specific event, but in fact they are not supplying any financial support to the event holder.The purpose of this study is to provide a deeper understanding on the role of ambush marketing in mega sporting events. The conducted study has a qualitative approach and the empirical data is collected through focus groups. To analyze the data, we have used a within-case analysis.This study has shown that the stated ambush marketing strategies are efficient for companies to mislead consumers. Moreover, the study also indicated that two strategies called support of event participants and advertising in the geographical surroundings of the event are distinguishingly more misleading than the other two discussed in this thesis.Validerat; 20160619 (global_studentproject_submitter