Relationship Marketing in Sports: A Functional Approach

By Colleen Bee, L. Kahle. Sport Marketing Quarterly, 2006

146 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper examines how and why consumers develop, enter into, and maintain relationships in a sports marketing context. This paper presents a framework for understanding how and why consumers engage in relationship marketing. Based on Kelman's functional approach to attitude change, this framework presents three qualitatively different levels for understanding relationship formation and maintenance: (a) compliance is superficial, temporary, and often the result of external influence; (b) identification is related to self-esteem and image enhancement of sport consumers; and (c) internalization is the result of values similarity. Internalization is more likely to result in a long-term relationship.

Subfields: Marketing, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f2195e521bea28f2ed24dd09bd651d9a7b6028d6

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Marketing

1. Yukyoum Kim
2. J. Doyle
3. Thilo Kunkel
4. Galen T. Trail
5. Yiran Su

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

1. Yukyoum Kim
2. J. Doyle
3. Thilo Kunkel
4. Galen T. Trail
5. Yiran Su

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Yukyoum Kim
2. Thilo Kunkel
3. Galen T. Trail
4. Yiran Su
5. J. Doyle
6. Y. Kim

Citations in the corpus

• Using triangulation and multiple case studies to advance relationship marketing theory (2009, background): “This view is reiterated by Bee and Kahle (2006) who indicate that, despite significant study of relationship marketing in numerous contexts, little research and theoretical development has occurred in sport.”
• Athlete branding via social media: examining the factors influencing consumer engagement on Instagram (2020, background): “Third, we forward knowledge pertaining to how relationship marketing operates within the sport context (Abeza et al., 2013; Bee & Kahle, 2006; Yoshida, 2017).”
• A conceptual framework for understanding relationships between sport consumers and sport organizations: a relationship quality approach. (2011, background): “In addition, Bee and Kahle (2006) investigated how the effects of relationship marketing on expected outcomes (e.”