Sponsorship in focus: a typology of sponsorship contexts and research agenda

Purpose Sponsorship has become an important marketing activity. However, research on the topic treats the sponsorship context, characterized according to the type of sponsored property and the social role of these properties, as a stable characteristic or as a dichotomous characteristic within empirical studies. Therefore, the authors outline a multi-level typology of the different types of sponsorship contexts to account for traditional types of sponsorship as well as emerging themes such as online sponsorship. The authors then propose an agenda for future research. Design/methodology/approach The authors conduct a general review of the sponsorship literature to synthesize established sponsorship types with newly emerging themes to develop a multi-level typology of sponsorship contexts and a research agenda. Findings The authors’ conceptual analysis revealed a typology of sponsorship contexts that captures both general and specific types of sports sponsorship, prosocial cause sponsorship, culture and community sponsorship, and media and programming content sponsorship. Research limitations/implications The authors’ typology provides an organizing framework for future research focussing on different sponsorship contexts. However, the emergent categories still require further empirical testing. Therefore, the authors develop a set of questions to guide future research on the topic. Practical implications The authors’ typology outlines the different sponsorship contexts that should be considered by organizations that engage in sponsorship-linked marketing. Originality/value This paper provides a multi-level categorization of sponsorship contexts that integrates both traditional categories and newly emerging categories to better inform future research on situational differences in sponsorship.