Psychological Connection to a New Sport Team: Building or Maintaining the Consumer Base?
By Jeffery D. James, Richard H. Kolbe, Galen T. Trail. Sport Marketing Quarterly, 2002
131 citations recorded by the source corpus.
A mail survey was conducted with season ticket holders (N=507) of a new Major League Baseball franchise to ascertain whether consumers felt a psychological connection with the team prior to any direct experience with the team. Three items scale wereas used to ascertain respondents’ level of psychological connection to the team (a=.74). Reasons for purchasing season tickets were compared among the groupings. Significant differences were found among the groups of respondents relative to the number and strength of the factors influencing the purchase of season tickets. No significant differences were found among the groups relative to demographic characteristics. Results showed that significant numbers of sport consumers can hold strong connections to a sport team without experiencing it personally. The results suggest a need to broaden current paradigms regarding the development and maintenance of loyal sport consumers. Implications and directions for future research are offered.
Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Gender Studies, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/66579367f1cb7e6ed8d2a88b493fc4d8c068014d
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Citations in the corpus
- Factors Influencing eSports Viewership: An Approach Based on the Theory of Reasoned Action (2020, background): “James, Kolbe, and Trail (2002) surveyed 507 season ticket holders of a new Major League Baseball franchise to examine what motivated this group of sports fans to watch baseball matches.”
- Exploring the development of team identification: the contribution of social identity and the psychological continuum model (2012, unknown): “Building on the work of James et al (2002) researchers have explored team identification in a new team context, finding that despite a short history, fans developed strong cognitive, affective and behavioural aspects of identification (Lock, Darcy, & Taylor, 2009).”