Innovative marketing in professional baseball teams

ABSTRACT

This study proposes comprehensive customer experience and team performance models in response to a lack of studies regarding service quality and performance in professional sports. Past studies have overlooked the effects of customer experience and customer-perceived board performance on team performance and loyalty behavior. The present study was conducted to provide a reference for the innovative marketing of professional sports teams. The study results reveal that both customer experience and team identification correlate positively with fan loyalty, and on-field and customer-perceived board performance positively moderated the effects of customer experience and team identification on repatronage intention. However, the moderating effects of on-field and customer-perceived board performance on word of mouth is nonsignificant. Professional sports teams must consider factors that are important to fans apart from winning and losing, and they must develop marketing strategies that attract new customers instead of relying solely on existing customers for team promotion.

KEYWORDS:

• Team identification
• team performance
• repatronage intention
• word of mouth
• customer experience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.