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Consumer Loyalty in the Sports Industry with a Focus on the NFL

Student: Oreshkova Anastasiia

Supervisor: Grigory Krichevsky

Faculty: Faculty of Creative Industries

Educational Programme: Advertising and Public Relations (Bachelor)

Final Grade: 10

Year of Graduation: 2020

The sports industry is a multi-billion dollar market that is experiencing significant growth every year. One of the driving factors of that success is loyal fans who contribute their time and money to following their favorite team. This study aims to provide a conceptual framework linking brand loyalty and the main factors that are responsible for creating loyalty in professional team sports. Building on existing work on brand loyalty, it asks: Is team loyalty predicated solely on on-field performance or are there other, equally-important factors? The National Football League was chosen as a representative brand in the sports industry. Although the practice of manufacturing brand loyalty in the context of professional sport teams is wide spread, research on the formation of brand loyalty in the sports marketing sphere is still relatively scarce. This study is largely inspired by Gladden and Funk’s model that examines the link between brand associations and loyalty in professional sports. This paper combines the previously mentioned model with Henri Tajfel's Social Identity Theory that describes how individuals form a sense of group belonging and identification. Based on David Aaker’s general conceptualization of brand equity and Kevin Lane Keller’s model on consumer-based brand equity, a series of in-depth research interviews was conducted with NFL fans to identify factors that might be predictive of brand loyalty in professional sports. Analysis of the responses demonstrated that on-field performance did not have significant impact on fan loyalty.

Full text (added May 17, 2020)

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