Examining the Effectiveness of Sponsorship and Ambush Marketing

摘要

With rising sponsorship expenditures every year, marketing practice has an essential need for information on sponsorship effectiveness. Since sponsorship fees for major sports events may add up to $44 million per year for FIFA World Cup Partners, creative ambush marketers seeking to position themselves as official sponsors, without paying license fees increasingly threaten traditional sponsorship. It is therefore of high interest for both academia and practice to understand the extent to which ambush marketers and team sponsors achieve marketing success compared to official sponsors. In order to fill the gap in terms of empirical research and in order to answer marketing managers' exigent question whether heavy investments in sponsorship license fees pay off, we analyze the effects of sponsorship and ambush marketing in terms of marketing effectiveness. We aim at contributing to the literature by providing a comprehensive analysis of the effectiveness of sponsorship and ambush marketing respectively, including several moderating effects. Furthermore, we examine whether consumers are able to distinguish between the advertisements of official event sponsors, team sponsors and ambush marketers, to find further evidence of the effectiveness of these advertisements. Additionally we aim at providing implications for practitioners operating in the area of event- and sport sponsorship.