Strategic Sports Marketing - Literature review Example

Strategic Sports Marketing

Introduction

In most segments of the sports industry market, the need to increase the sales of their product to boost generation of revenue for their companies often pressurizes the sports marketers. The pressure to make more sales has posed a challenge that forces the sports marketers to get involved in persuading customers to buy their products using all the means possible (Blackwell and Engel, 2000, p.17). The latter has led to cases of exaggeration or misrepresentation of the product by the sports marketers to sell them in bulk. Therefore, today the sports marketers are urged to formulate good marketing strategies and plans to ensure that they present genuine and honest information about their products. Similarly, the marketing of sports events also faces the same challenge as they aim at luring as many people as possible to attend the events (Funk et al., 2001, p.292). The marketers often major in the primary factors that are associated with the attendance of sports events, which include self-esteem, entertainment, social facilitation and aesthetics when marketing the sports events. The paper undertakes a literature review of the consumer behavior in the marketing of sports and games.

The individual’s experience is what governs the consumer behaviour in sports and events. The need to seek a consumption experience provides a reflection of the desire to offer satisfaction of the internal needs and acquisition of benefits (Funk et al., 2001, p.292). The experience that the individuals expect to get from a sports event would be the primary determinant on the number of people who are likely to attend the event. The likelihood that the persons attending the sports activity will enjoy every bit of the activities also plays a significant role in determining the number of people who may attend the event. Therefore, all the sports marketers should give considerable attention to the ability of the sports event to entertain the people who will attend it, the marketing strategies and the marketing plan should focus on the entertainment (Laurent and Kapferer, 1985, p.26).

The sports events marketers should acknowledge the existence of a considerable social impact that sports has in the lives of the people, which influence the behavior of the population (Pons & Mourali, 2014, p. 24). Social impacts are significant in determining the way people relate regarding work, play, entertain themselves and organize to meet each other. The marketing of the sports events should take into consideration the social life of the people around and include some social aspects in the event to attract more locals to attend (Laurent and Kapferer, 1985, p.26). The sports marketers may provide social benefits to the communities around during the event and can include children entertainment activities to enable the parent to come with their children. The organizers may include other facilities to entertain the children such as bouncing castles, swimming, face painting and other activities to make the event an all-inclusive for the whole family to attend. According to Maccinis and Folkes (2010, p.899), sports events play a significant role in the community’s branding and marketing strategy, and the event organizers should consider that when staging a sports event to be able to attract more local participants and spectators.

The Nature of the Sports Events

The nature of the sports events determines the marketing strategy to use in marketing such an event. Sports events classify as local, national, regional, and international events. The local sports events are those held within a particular locality and often involve the participation of the people from the surrounding areas of communities (Pons & Mourali, 2014, p. 24). The organizers and marketers of such events would use much simpler means of marketing the event including the inclusion of some cultural entertainment aspects of that particular community to lure more people to attend the event. Conversely, the international sports events would cover much wider region such as provinces and states with participants coming from diverse regions across that particular nation.

Marketing a national sports event using entertainment strategy would be slightly different from the approach used in marketing a local sports event and would require more resources to reach a larger group of people since media will have to be involved (Wakfiels & Blodgett, 1996, p.22). Finally, there are mega sports events that target the wider international tourism market. The size and the attendance scope the public financial involvement, the political effects, the media coverage, the target market, the economic and the social impact of such events are quite big and have to be considered. The marketers of such sports, therefore, would require including various entertainment activities to attract more people to attend the event. Every target group has to be considered separately according to their preferences. These hallmark events are normally linked with a particular destination, which often affects the status of that specific location by raising its economic and social standards (Shank and Lyberger, 2014, p. 11). However, major events are not location specific but give significant economic benefits, visitors and media coverage on their scope and size. As stated above, the local events do not have much impact as the hallmark, mega and major events since they are usually regionally based. Therefore, the marketers and the organizers of any sports event must be able to classify the event into either, a mega, hallmark, major or a local event to design the best marketing strategy and plan that fits the event (Shank and Lyberger, 2014, p. 11).

Sports Marketing and Improving Quality of Life

There is a slight shift in the lifestyle across the globe today with increased cases of obesity, feeling of isolation and life expectancy as many people depends on the entertainment from TV shows. Sports can directly or indirectly influence people’s lives in various ways. Sports and events are important as they can influence a person’s health and well-being and help in building social cohesion among communities as well as provide healthy entertainment (Witkemper and Waldburger, 2012, p.170). Sports and events may also help in shaping the economy as well as developing cultural and national identities. Therefore, the sports marketers are faced with the challenge of improving the quality of life as well as entertaining when promoting their products or organizing their events. The sports marketing organizations will be forced to include the aspect of improvement of life quality and cohesion among communities of different cultures in their marketing plan or strategies (Witkemper and Waldburger, 2012, p.170). The approach that should be given to sports marketing today should include the ability of the event being marketed to improve the lifestyle of the locals apart from the aspect of entertainment.

Sports and Event Consumer Behavior

The kinds of entertainment activities that can be included in the marketing process rely mainly on the relationship between the sport and events and the consumer behaviour (Chen, 2014, p.17). The consumer behavior, in this case, involves the process involved in determining how persons select, use, and purchase, disposes of the sport, and sports event related products. The consumer behaviour is defined the services and products offered in the sport and the leisure industry. Stavros, Wilson, and Smith (2016, p. 89) suggest that the marketing process must consider the sports event behaviour basing on three main components, travel to participate, going to watch sports events and travelling to visit a sporting attraction. The process of assessing the consumer behaviour is primarily meant to seek sports consumption experience that is likely to satisfy needs and provide benefits. The definition of how the consumers make decisions to use their resources of money and time on sports and events consumption activities (Lantos, 2015, p.16).

The time resource is considered in term of a number of time consumers are likely to devote to attending a sports event, watch a sports event via Television or in persons, radio or through the Internet broadcast (Turley and Kelley, 2015, p. 395). The definition also includes the likelihood of a particular group of people to participate in various sports activities or attend various sports events. The various ways in which people follow sporting activities is also crucial in defining the consumer behavior. The use of media, Internet, and the daily sports magazines in following sporting events are also important in determining the consumer behavior. The sports marketers should consider the consumer behavior pattern when designing the marketing strategies and marketing plans. On the contrary, money resources can be defined regarding the monetary decisions that persons include in their personal budgets for sports and event related products and services (Turley and Kelley, 2015, p. 397). The individual’s financial status would determine his ability to participate or engage in a sporting activity. The individual’s financial status would also determine the kind of entertainment activities he or she would get involved for example the golfers have always been associated with the wealthy people.

Most of the literature about sports events marketing mainly addresses the marketing of products and not specifically sports events and the research was unable to find sources that specifically address the marketing of sports events using entertainment only. Most of the researches done by sports and events marketing did a holistic research on the general topic with no specific consideration for marketing a particular sports product. The approach that the researcher used was more or less the same as most of them used literature from other sources as the main source of data. However, there were some similarities between the various research approaches used by the authors. All the research questions used were similar with the main research objective being to find out the factors that govern sports marketing, what the sports marketers should consider when formulating the marketing strategies. However, the aspect of consumer behavior was given a common treatment by the authors with all of them looking at it regarding the likeliness of a consumer to select, buy, attend a sports event or use a sports product.