Sports brand love 2.0 in the context of football teams

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the antecedents of brand love of football team fans, as well as the predictive role of its dimensions in behavioural intentions that would help us understand why fans come to “love” their teams and what they can do to demonstrate that love. Using a sample of 557 fans of a Mexican sports team and structural equations, this paper proposes a theoretical framework related to the brand love of fans’ football teams. The results show that (1) social identity, social media dependency, hedonic emotions, advertising expenditure perceptions, and trust influence the building of a brand love; and (2) this brand love influences the offline and online behaviour and fan commitment. Additionally, brand associations influence hedonic emotions, except for the effect of coach perceptions. The study provides important implications for sports team managers, offering evaluative and analytical tools to help manage the team's brand and cultivate strong and lasting relationships with the team's fans. There are three main contributions: (1) contribution to the study of the influence of brand associations on hedonic emotions, (2) integrated study of the influence of brand associations, hedonic emotions, advertising investment and trust on brand love, and (3) analysis of the effects of brand love on offline and online behavioural intentions, and commitment.

KEYWORDS:

• Brand love 2.0
• sports marketing
• brand associations
• social media
• behavioural intentions
• eWOM

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