Sport fan identity and social network: the contagion of team identificaiton

摘要

@@ Introduction Consumer identification engenders benefits of increased loyalty, positive word-of-mouth, recommendations, and customer recruitment (Bhattarcharya & Sen, 2003). Sport, as a potent vehicle of symbolic representation (Chalip, 1992), is particularly conducive in building identity. Sport fans identification with sport teams influences the level of consumption and the likelihood to purchase from team sponsors (Madrigal, 2000). While the social nature of identity has been well acknowledged (James, 2001), little work has been done to study the effects of social embeddedness on fan identification.