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Understanding Consumer Response to Sponsorship Information: A Resource‐Matching Approach
Author(s) -
Deitz George D.,
Myers Susan W.,
Stafford Marla R.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
psychology and marketing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.035
H-Index - 116
eISSN - 1520-6793
pISSN - 0742-6046
DOI - 10.1002/mar.20517
Subject(s) - attribution , matching (statistics) , psychology , perspective (graphical) , perception , cognition , identification (biology) , event (particle physics) , resource (disambiguation) , social psychology , cognitive resource theory , task (project management) , marketing , business , computer science , economics , computer network , statistics , botany , physics , mathematics , management , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , neuroscience , biology
Sponsorship of sporting teams and events has become an increasingly popular form of corporate and brand communication. Despite the continued growth of sponsorship spending, the corresponding literature base is highly fragmented and little agreement exists related to the psychological mechanisms underlying response. This paper integrates several prominent sponsorship research streams in promoting a “resource‐matching” perspective of cognitive elaboration and attitude change. This research holds that in the absence of clear functional fit between sponsor and event, identifying a basis for sponsor–event fit is likely to require some degree of cognitive effort. The results indicate stronger social identification with the sponsored event influences the favorability they attribute to sponsor motives and promotes stronger perceptions of fit between the sponsor and the sponsored activity. Further, the results indicate fit perceptions mediate the relationship between attribution and sponsorship response. Consistent with ELM theory, when cognitive resources are insufficient for the complexity of the fit‐matching task, social identification may still act as a peripheral cue in driving a positive affective response to sponsorship information.