Equating Attitudes to Allegiance: The Usefulness of Selected Attitudinal Information in Segmenting Loyalty to Professional Sports Teams

By Daniel C. Funk, D. Pastore. Sport Marketing Quarterly, 2000

157 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Despite the growing body of literature on consumer loyalty, little attention has been given to identifying attitudinal variables useful in predicting allegiance to athletic teams. The changing nature of sport marketing has made it imperative to develop new segmentation variables to augment behavioral information on consumers. The present study examined the predictive validity of eight attitude properties in explaining allegiance to a professional sports team. A composite loyalty measure (commitment and behavior) was utilized to segment the sample (N = 379) into high-, moderate-, and low-loyalty groups. Multiple discriminant analysis was next employed to assess the relative influence of attitudinal information in explaining group differences. Results indicated that two attitude properties could be used to segment consumer loyalty with 80% accuracy without prior knowledge of allegiance. These results provide sport researchers with the ability to diagnose and differentiate among a team's consumer base to understand past, present, and future behavior.

Subfields: Gender Studies, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/812077fa4a651642c56e6300cf3d43175efa12a5

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Citations in the corpus

Exploring the development of team identification: the contribution of social identity and the psychological continuum model (2012, unknown): “…explaining the role of socialization processes in the development of attraction to support (de Groot & Robinson, 2008; Funk & James, 2006), data here suggested that the key process leading to progression to attachment was direct team-related experience (Funk & James, 2001; Funk & Pastore, 2000).”
Exploring Origins of Involvement: Understanding the Relationship Between Consumer Motives and Involvement with Professional Sport Teams (2004, background): “Of specific relevance is the relationship between involvement and psychological commitment to a sport team (Funk & Pastore, 2000; Mahony, Madrigal, & Howard, 1999).”
Testing a Hierarchy of Effects Model of Sponsorship Effectiveness (2012, background): “…identification (Wann & Branscombe, 1993), attraction (Hansen & Gauthier, 1989), association, (Gladden et al., 1998), attachment (Funk, Haugtvedt, & Howard, 2000), involvement (Kerstetter & Kovich, 1997), importance (Funk & Pastore, 2000), and psychological connection to team (James & Ross, 2002).”
Brand Image and Fan Loyalty in Professional Team Sport: A Refined Model and Empirical Assessment (2008, background): “…wearing the colors or logo of the favorite club, and trying to convince 208 Bauer, Stokburger-Sauer, and Exler others that the favorite club should be supported (Fink, Trail, & Anderson, 2003; Funk & Pastore, 2000; Gladden & Funk, 2001; Mahony, Madrigal, & Howard, 2000; Shank & Beasley, 1998).”