Commercial Sponsorship - The Development of Understanding

* Keywords: Understanding, Model, Research, Consumer Effects Executive Summary Consumer sponsorship now represents one of the most rapidly growing and perhaps interesting areas of marketing activity. While large-scale corporate investment has been relatively recent it is nonetheless ironic that understanding of this form of marketing activity remains largely under-developed and, where available, at best patchy. This paper seeks to examine the development of understanding of sponsorship. More particularly, it categorises the source streams which have led to current understanding and their relative contribution. The specific areas which have received the bulk of the limited research activity to date are two-fold, namely profiling sponsorship management practices and studies of consumer awareness, and these are examined in detail as are the research methodologies employed. To date structured survey research has been the main method of research employed almost to the exclusion of alternative approaches such as case study and ethnographic research and experimentation or, for that matter, the usage of focus group and depth interview research in a stand-alone capacity as aids to developing understanding. The usage of these latter neglected research modes, if applied in conjunction with creative thinking about sponsorship issues, has the capacity to deliver the incremental jumps in understanding which the subject requires. The paper seeks to provide an agenda for future research by identifying six areas of emerging research concentration. These include broadcast sponsorship, ambush marketing, the sponsor/event-owner relationship, a resource-based view of sponsorship, image and meaning-transfer in sponsorship as well as a model of how sponsorship works. While all such areas present challenges to the development of understanding, the latter topic involving the search for a comprehensive model of the effects of sponsorship on consumers poses the most important challenge. Such explanations in the related field of advertising were similarly slow to develop and are continuously being refined. However, their existence and refinement provided the central basis for understanding in that field. To date sponsorship lacks such comprehensive explanations and as such the development of such a model must represent the holy grail for both practitioners and academics in the field. Furthermore, in this and on all other sponsorship issues, understanding is likely to develop more rapidly and in terms of validity where both theorists and practitioners openly contribute to collective understanding. Introduction It is now widely accepted in marketing and media circles that commercial sponsorship represents one of the most rapidly growing sectors of marketing communications activity. Between 1984 and 1997, worldwide expenditure on sponsorship as a corporate communications medium increased from 2 billion to 18. 1 billion (SRI 1998). Over this time period, research conducted by both academics and practitioners has sought to improve our collective understanding of the sponsorship medium with varying degrees of emphasis and related success. The purpose of this paper is to examine the research undertaken, the research strands pursued, the methodologies involved, the state of current understanding and finally to indicate certain directions for future research attention. An analysis of the development of sponsorship understanding suggests certain observations that it is important to outline at the outset of this paper. * Given the scale and scope of commercial sponsorship, it is surprising that the development of understanding on this topic has been so slow to date. * At this juncture the major task facing both academicians and practitioners in this field is to develop a comprehensive model of sponsorship effects similar to the explanations of advertising effects on consumers currently available. …