Sports Sponsorship Effectiveness: The Impact of Transformational Consumption Experiences

As technology such as DVR, television subscription services (e.g. Hulu), and video streaming (e.g. Netflix) continues to change the advertising game, more and more marketers are turning to sponsorship of live or interactive events to capture their target market (Schultz 2013). North American firms will spend nearly $14 billion on sports sponsorship in 2013 an expected increase of 6 % over 2012 and almost three times the expected increase in overall ad spending (2.3 %) for 2013 (IEG 2013). Of these sponsorships, title sponsorships are the most coveted with firms paying upwards of $35 million dollars for the naming rights of an event (e.g. Bank of America Chicago Marathon; IEG ImageTrack). According to research on experiential consumption, the experiences consumers have at the sponsored events can potentially impact their perception of the sponsoring brand (Dodson 1996; Schouten et al. 2007). In this study, we find that consumers reporting transformational consumption experiences, defined as intrinsically enjoyable experiences laden with intense emotional content, illustrated significantly greater change in brand integration than consumers who reported more mundane experiences. This relationship was mediated by the degree of self-transformation (measured by change in self efficacy) resulting from the event.