Brand Experience on the Pitch: How the Sponsors Fared in the World Cup

ABSTRACT Brands see major live events as opportunities to connect with consumers and to build brand equity and sales. In this article, we describe how the classical MCA® methodology was adapted and how a modified MCA® questionnaire was applied to interview a sample of 10,000 urban young adult respondents in 10 major world cities before and after the FIFA 2006 World Cup event. We emphasize the online quantitative methodology choice by addressing (1) the major concerns about online market research particularly with respect to the sampling and demographic issue, and (2) the appropriateness as well as (3) the benefits of online market research. We then discuss how the metrics derived from this research were used to address the following two key questions: (1) Did sponsoring the World Cup help brands? (2) Are sponsoring contacts more influential than others?