Examination of Affective Responses to Images in Sponsorship-Linked Marketing

ABSTRACT

Sponsorship of sports, arts, charity and entertainment events are all viewed as capable in building corporate and brand image. In this process, visual images are a key vehicle in the transportation of affect from an event to a brand. While the overall positive feeling of a sponsored event or activity is argued to rub-off on a brand, we know less about how individual images function in this process and we know even less about the role of negative images. Here, three experiments consider the potential of affect transfer from images to brands. All three experiments show explicit transfer of affect, and one finds implicit evaluative change. Importantly, positive images when mixed with negative are off-setting. This research suggests that when negative events occur and are captured and repeated in the media, practitioners able to supply positive images may be able to control negative affective responses to some degree.

探究赞助市场对于形象的情感反应

体育༌艺术༌慈善和娱乐项目的赞助在建立企业和品牌形象都被视为能力。在这个过程中༌形象的功能被视为从事件到一个品牌转换的关键方法。虽然所有的赞助对于一个赛事或者活动的积极效应可能会被质疑抹掉了这个品牌的存在感༌但是我们不知道单独形象如何在过程中发挥作用༌我们甚至也不了解消极形象所起产生的影响。本文中༌会有三个实验来考量形象对品牌所产生的潜在影响。这三个实验会表明影响的明确转化以及隐含着评价的变化。尤为重要的是༌当积极的形象混合着消极的成分原本的积极效果可能会被抵消掉。本研究表明当消极的事件发生并被媒体反复报道时༌相关人员能够通过提供积极的形象在一定程度上来控制消极影响的产生及传播。

KEYWORDS:

• Marketing
• psychology
• affective priming
• sponsorship

关键词:

• 销售
• 体育
• 情感投入
• 赞助

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

T. Bettina Cornwell

T. Bettina Cornwell (Ph.D. in marketing, The University of Texas) is the Edwin E. and June Woldt Cone Professor of Marketing in the Lundquist College of Business at the University of Oregon. Prior to joining the University of Oregon, she was Professor of Marketing and Sport Management at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on marketing communications and consumer behavior and often includes international and public policy emphases. Bettina's research on corporate sponsorship of sports, arts and charity has appeared in the Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and Psychology & Marketing. Her book Sponsorship in Marketing: Effective Communication Through Sports, Arts and Events was published by Routledge in 2014. She was the 2009 American Marketing Association, Sports Marketing and Special Events Special Interest Group award recipient for “Distinguished Contributions to the Scientific Understanding of Sports Business” and is the 2016 Thomas C. Stewart Distinguished Professor at the Lundquist College of Business.

Ottmar V. Lipp

Ottmar V. Lipp is a professor of psychology at Curtin University, Perth, Australia. His research, both basic and applied, is concerned with emotion, attention and human learning. He has published widely on topics relating to the influence of emotional information on attention and on the acquisition and extinction of likes and dislikes in associative learning.

Helena Purkis

Helena Purkis is a psychologist at Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia. After completing a post doctoral fellowship at the University of Queensland she joined Griffith University to complete her clinical training. Her research is concerned with fear and anxiety and the effect of these emotional states on information processing in adults and children.