Interference effects in competitive sponsorship clutter

© 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. This article examines the effects on consumers’ attitudes of the concurrent exposure of competitive brands sponsoring different properties during an event (i.e., sponsoring an event vs. the athletes participating in this event), thus creating a competitive sponsorship clutter. In contrast with previous research having examined interference effects in advertising, the results of this research reveal that in a sponsorship setting, clutter effects on consumer responses depend on perceived sponsor–sponsee congruence and do not result from deeper information processing. More precisely, it was found that whereas the evaluation of a congruent sponsoring brand is negatively affected by clutter, the impact of clutter on attitude toward an incongruent sponsor is positive. In addition, articulating the sponsorship was shown to decrease the negative effects of clutter. Implications for research and practice are derived from these findings