Sports Fan Loyalty - Coursework Example

Consumer Research University Name INTRODUCTION In our society today, sports have become one of the key activities that influence people’s way of life. Today, the number of people who attend sporting activities has immensely increased across a large variety of cultures. A lot of people today are spending a great amount of money to buy tickets to go and watch games live [Cap01].When it comes to the concept of consumer behavior, spectators of various sports are viewed as different in their own way. In a number of consumers setting, the idea of long-term loyalty is quickly fading [Sch97]. Spectators only show their loyalty to the sporting clubs which they have chosen to faithfully support [Tap03]. There is a great difference between sport consumers and consumers of other products and due to these difference, sport consumers are now being examined by Professional sporting clubs in a different way from other consumers. Over the years, it has been a bit difficult to understand fully the behavior of sport consumers. In this paper, I am going to lay stress more on the club “funs” described as “most loyal group of supporters connected to a club”. These kind of supporters are always there for their clubs even when they are experiencing a down fall. LITERATURE REVIEW Loyalty Loyalty has become the key thing that modern corporations are looking for from their consumers. This is because loyal consumers provide them with a great amount of profits over a long period of time [Jac78]. Jacoby and Chestnut in their description they said that brand loyalty is the act of a consumer to prefer using a given brand which he/she chooses from a number of same type of brands for long period of time. This kind of decision by consumers happens after they evaluated all the brands and chooses the one that works better for them. On the other hand, others describer consumer brand loyalty as the way consumer keep on using the same brand over and over in time regardless of the change in situation or promotion and marketing efforts that may make them change and start using a different brand. There are three ways to describe loyalty [Jac78]. Firstly, behavioral definition which describes loyalty as the way customers will repeatedly buy a given brand over time. Secondly, attitudinal definition describes loyalty as the way a customer will feel obliged to buy the same brand time after time, that is, it is a psychological state of mind to use the same brand. Lastly, composite definition describes loyalty as concept that has different dimensions and it comprises of the two other definitions [Jac78] . Measuring supporter loyalty to a given sporting club is usually similar to measuring of customer loyalty to a particular brand of goods or services. It can clearly be seen that people who support sports show unending loyalty to their sports clubs in the way they are fanatics and only support a single club in a particular sport like football. Eisler in an article in he wrote in 1997 in US’s largest daily nation known as USA Today, he said, “Marriages come and go, so do jobs, hometowns, friendships, but a guy attachment to a sports team?, There’s a bond that holds the heart!”[Eis97] It has been seen that time after time that based on behavioral loyalty, supporters of a particular sports club will remain loyal and support it even during a time when its performance is deteriorating. In past researches which have been getting their research data from fans attendance to games being played by the teams, they show the existence of unending loyalty of fans to a given sports club[Mah00]. The act of supporters to remain loyal to their sports clubs regardless of their poor performances has been evident over the years. A good example is Manchester city a football club that plays in the English premier league. Manchester city was relegated to Division 1 in the 95/96 season. It continued with its poor performance and got relegated to division 2 in the 97/98 season. After all these its supporters remained loyal and it was able to have about 30,000 fans who attended its games when it was in division (Seddo, 2015). Similarly, these kind of loyalty can be seen can be seen from fans of Collingwood Magpies a football team in the Australian Football league [Qui00]. In addition the same loyalty is exhibited by the supporters of the Vancouver Grizzles basketball team of the NBA[Bri01]. Contrary to the above research there is also enough evidence to show disagreement. Regardless of the fact that some funs of several clubs have remained loyal to their clubs despite of their poor performance it can also be seen clearly that most fans will tend to support teams that are winning [Mad95]. This kind of behavior can be regarded to the same as that of consumers of other products who will leave a particular brand to consume one that has better attributes. One good example of this kind of a situation is Napoli FC a football club that plays in the Italian Serie A. in the 1990’s Napoli used to always be among the top teams in the league. During this time the team had a good number of supports who were over 50,000. When the team goes relegated in 1998 its number of supporters dropped to about 10,000 which saw it loose over 40,000 funs (European League Statistic, 2015). This is a clear evidence that there is no formal behavioral loyalty exhibited by sports fans. On the other hand, another research done shows that show that not all people who buy tickets to watch a game being played do so because they are loyal supporters of the team playing. They attend for very different reasons like to be entertained or just because they love the game[Tap03]. It has been found that most people who go to watch a game being played by a big team will do so in order to be termed as supporters of such a team which help to enhance their own ego. This kind of concept is known as BIRGing [Kah96]. These concept can be used in trying to understand why there is large number of spectators who follow great teams like Manchester united and Baseball New York Yankees [Kah96]..When a team is in a winning streak, BIRGing spectators will exhibit all characteristics of a loyal fan until the team starts loosing. This kind of spectators will tend to support the teams which are at the top of a given league. In addition a study by Kahle et al showed that supporters who spectate matches for the purposes of being termed with big teams are mostly the kind of consumers who change from one brand to another[Kah96]. On the other hand, Tapp’s study shows that there is also a big number of people fully loyal to their chosen club and are referred to as “funs”[Tap03] The sports “fan” defined According to Spinrad, a fan will always make conversions and always have in his or a mind events of sporting activities all the time even when these events are not taking place at the moment [Spi81]. On the other hand, being a fan has also been described as the kind of belonging where one is able to acquire a great feeling of emotional significance[Hir92]. In addition, Madrigal agrees with this definition. In his definition he says that fans are a group of spectators who gives a person with a great sense of emotional and value significance. In their description, Lee and Zeiss define sport fan as a kind of spectator who show full loyalty to their chosen sports team. These kind of funs show their loyalty by purchasing seasonal or one game tickets[Lee80]. In another description by Sutton he describes fans as vested fans. These are kind of spectators who are extremely loyal to their chosen sports clubs. This kind of loyalty is shown by a fan supporting one sports team for a very long period of time by always buying tickets to attended matches being played by these particular team. It can also be seen when a fun stills supports these one team even when these team is performing poorly[Sut97]. Fan characteristics Over the years, studies show that sport supporters have mainly being men. Men fans have always been many in number than women[Wan01]. On the other hand, recent studies have shown an increase in female sports supporters. Even though the number of male supporters is high these shows a possible change of events. This kind of scenario can be seen NFL AND NHL which are sporting leagues in America. In these leagues, female supporters have increased to 45 per cent of the whole number of fans[Wan01]. This same case is exhibited in the English premier league games where the number of women fans has greatly increased in the recent years Studies have shown that some fan’s emotions are influenced by their team’s performance. According to Eisler, some fans emotional balance will be determined by a win or loss of the team their loyal to. If their teams loose these fans will be emotionally hurt and these will cause them a lot of emotional pain [Eis97]. In addition, Sloan’s research shows that when a team wins its supporters will show positive emotions and if a team loses its supporters will show negative emotions. Study has shown that fans who are fanatics cannot withstand those fans who are not truly loyal to their teams as they are[Fis92]. In agreement to these study, Marsh et al study shows that fanatics dislike those fans who do not exhibit the characteristics of a fully loyal fan to the team they support[Mar89]. Redden and Steiner Show that fanatics view those fans who are not full loyal to their teams as intruders and in addition to them supporting and promoting their teams names they also very obliged to chase away these disloyal fans(Redden and Steiner). According to Corbin, sport makes supporters go through arousal and a rise in heart beat rate [Cor73]. In another study by Bromberger, they show that this arousal is the one that makes fans cheer, wave, yell, sing, chant and beat drums during a gaming event[Bro93]. Sloan in his research he showed that when watching a sporting game violent arousal may be witnessed. He said that violent aggression and hostility among spectators can be brought about by watching violent games like football[Slo79]. A good example of this kind of violence can be given by the incidence in Moscow after the 2002 world cup where a riot in Moscow lead to the death of 2 people and 50 more injured simply because Japanese side had defeated Russian side. Rationality of sports fans The act of sports fan to show unending loyalty to a particular sporting club even when the club is performing poorly has led several researchers question the rationality of sporting supporters. Vivek Rao compares sporting consumption to consumption of other goods. To him if a good drops in quality its consumers switches to another similar good which has better quality. He says this is not the case when it comes to sports consumers, they will continue buying tickets to watch their team of choice even when the team is performing poorly and losing games ( Vivek Rao 2003). On the other hand, Quick in his study he divides sports loyalty among fans into rational and irrational customers. Rational customer are those ones who watch games for entertainment sake while irrational are those ones who are fanatics [Qui00]. CRITICAL EVALUATION From the literature review, it is clear that past studies have focused more on psychological state of mind of sporting supporters, a little on sporting culture but none of this research shows how political/systematic perspective affect fans support to a given sporting club. In the case where Mahoney shows how sporting clubs fans have an unending loyalty to their clubs of choice even when they are performing poorly, it is a clear indication that supporting a sporting club this much can only be because fans minds are programmed to do so by the love they have for the club. This kind of findings shows that the researcher focused more on the psychological perspective of consumer research. Another case where psychological perspective is used is where Tapp talks about supporters who will switch from supporting a losing team to support a winning team. In his study, he says that such supporters will switch to supporting teams that are winning in order to boost their self-image or raise the ego by being associated with big teams. The psychological perspective has been used by Vivek to show the rationality of sporting clubs. He says that fans of a certain team will support it even when it is poorly performing. This kind of support makes him question their rationality. He says that fans are irrational when it comes to supporting sporting clubs. Cultural consumer research perspective can be seen where researchers talk of men as dominant sport supporters. This as been the culture in sports, there is point in time will women supporters be more than men supporters. The reason as to why researchers have mostly used psychological consumer research perspective is because supporting a certain sporting club and not another has to be influenced by a person’s mind set. The reason as to why a person will become a loyal fan to a given sporting club and fail to betray it when it is performing poorly is because his or her mind has been programmed to fully support this particular club after a long period of time watching this club play. This also the reason why a supporter of a team will experience emotional breakdown when his or team loses. Another reason why psychological perspective is mainly used is because these perspective is able to bring out well the reason why fans will very aroused when they watch a game and the reason why they will result to violence when their team is defeated by a team that they had believed could not defeat their team. This is showed by the Moscow scenario when the Russian football team was defeated by the Japanese football team in the 2002 world cup. The reason why political research perspective has not been used porting fan loyalty is because it could not clearly bring out the reason why sport consumers remain loyal to a particular sporting club regardless of its performance. I believe if it was used it could show how politics of a country or the politics of a sporting club would influence the supporters decision to remain loyal to a particular team. An interesting conversion is one on intolerance. In this field of research, study shows loyal funs do not tolerate funs who are not fully committed to the teams they support. I think these section should be further researched on. PROPOSAL FOR STUDY A study to determine how sporting fans are created. An introduction to the concept of how fans a created will be provided. It will enable the readers of the proposal understand what the proposal will be talking of. Literature review Cultural consumer research perspective will show how sporting fans have come to exist time after time. Comparing and contrasting researches by different authors on these concept of sporting fans culture will give convincing explanations as to how sporting fans are created. Looking at the existing studies on this concept will help to understand how different authors have tackled this area of study and give an overview of what how I should conduct my research. Comparing and contrasting the existing theories and concepts will show the readers of the proposal that I understand what I am researching on. Past studies as shown that the amount of men who support sports are more than the women making these to be a male dominated domain. They have shown that the sporting culture has formed more men funs than women. These studies explain why it has been so easy for men to become sports supporters than women. Existing studies will provide the gap in research in this field. These will enable me to know which concept to research on the findings I expect to get from my research. According to previous researchers, there has been a gap in study of the political concept in explaining how sporting fans are formed. This gives the idea of what to research on. It is my strong believe that if a study on how political activities of a country or a sporting club are researched on, they will provide a good argument on how a person is lured into supporting a particular sporting club. There are kind of people who like controversy. This kind of people find themselves supporting games in which his/her countries politicians have debated much on or a sporting club which its leaders are always disagreeing on how to manage the club. On the other hand, there are kind of people who hate controversial issues. This kind of people tend to support the kind of games in which no body is debating about and the leadership of these games is well defined. Using political consumer research perspective will provide the required information to show how sporting fans are created. It will also show the reader why it has been easy for men to be created as sports fans and not women. Methodology I would interview supporters of different sports to find out they come to support their teams of choice. I would also administers well detailed questionnaires to supports of different teams. Conclusion Conclusion will be based on the findings of the study and the recommendations provided for further studies in this field of sports and sporting fans. References Cap01: , (Capella, 2001), Sch97: , (Schriver, 1997), Tap03: , (Tapp, 2003), Jac78: , (Jacoby, 1978), Eis97: , (Eisler, 1997), Mah00: , (Mahoney, 2000), Qui00: , (Quick, 2000), Bri01: , (Bristow, 2001), Mad95: , (Madrigal, 1995), Tap03: , (Tapp, 2003), Kah96: , (Kahle, 1996), Spi81: , (Spinrad, 1981), Hir92: , (Hirt, 1992), Lee80: , (Zeiss, 1980), Sut97: , (Sutton, 1997), Wan01: , (Wann, 2001), Eis97: , (Eisler, 1997), Fis92: , (Fiske, 1992), Mar89: , (Marshal P, 1989), Cor73: , (Corbin, 1973), Bro93: , (al B. e., 1993), Slo79: , (Sloan, 1979), Read More