Branding in women’s sports activities: A literature evaluation
ABSTRACT
The motive of this study become to explore the gaps within the branding literature because it pertains to women’s sports activities. The review included eleven articles from recreation control and enterprise journals, investigating private branding, group branding, and media coverage. Additionally, the evaluation explored the sensible implications as well as avenues of future research (i.E., conceptual version).
Keywords: branding, women’s sports, media
INTRODUCTION
According to Nielsen, eighty four% of sports activities fans are interested in girls’s sports activities. Enthusiasm is emerging. For instance, in the WNBA’s nineteenth season average attendance changed into over 7, 000; more than the NBA in its 19th season (Griffin, 2016). Moreover, the 2018 NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship game become the most-watched basketball recreation broadcast on ESPN since the NBA playoffs (“Women’s identify recreation”, 2018). Conversely, handiest 2-three% of community and cable tv coverage of sports activities is devoted to ladies’s sports (Fink, 2015). Additionally, girls’s sports accounted for simplest 0.Four% of overall sport sponsorships among 2011 and 2013 (Rogers, 2018). Considering the purchasing power of girls, this untapped marketplace is top from a spectator and client outlook (Fink, 2015). Although several studies offer a sociological view, few research have taken a advertising technique when inspecting women’s sports activities.
Pursuing brand management strategies is one way to set your commercial enterprise aside in a competitive carrier emblem industry (Williams & Pedersen, 2012). Women’s sports brands are in competition with the dominant men’s sports industry. An progressed know-how of branding in women’s sports is needed that allows you to increase awareness, and ultimately brand fairness. The present observe aims to discover the literature relative to branding in ladies’s sports activities as a basis for a proposed conceptual model. Thus, presenting any other road for greater empirical research on this context at the same time as exploring a option to the minimal intake of girls’s sports.
For the purpose of this observe, ladies’s sports activities is described as: character and team sports activities performed by using girls on the collegiate and expert stage, nationally and the world over.
LITERATURE REVIEW
As the leader branding concept, emblem equity is the set of assets and liabilities related to a emblem that provides or subtracts from the price of the logo inside the minds of consumers (Aaker, 1991). According to the studies, client perception is paramount for growing brand equity with carrier entities (Berry, 2000; Kwan Green, Hill, & Hunt, 2013). Developing service brand fairness suggests that an enterprise has a diagnosed brand and emblem that means because of the inner advertising of the manufacturers’ message, external brand communications, and consumer stories (Berry, 2000). This examine could be the first to explore emblem fairness in a girls’s sports activities context. Although there are multiple conceptualization of logo fairness, client-primarily based emblem equity will be carried out to the present day have a look at. Consumer-based totally emblem equity is “the differential impact of brand understanding on patron response to the advertising of a emblem” (Keller, 1993). Consumer-based logo equity takes place whilst a patron is aware about a brand and holds a few favorable, robust, and particular emblem associations of their thoughts (Keller).
Brand fairness has been conceptualized in the game and participatory recreation segments. Gladden, Milne, & Sutton (1998) developed the primary logo equity model in sport. Their version become designed based totally on Aaker’s (1991) framework of brand fairness belongings (i.E., emblem focus, emblem institutions, perceived pleasant, logo loyalty). Ross (2006) evolved a spectator-primarily based logo fairness version based on Keller’s (1993) conceptualization of purchaser-primarily based emblem fairness and emphasized the carrier oriented nature of spectator game.
Brand-related research in participatory recreation (i.E., health golf equipment, campus leisure sports) have utilized previous brand association scales to study consumer conduct (Alexandris, Douka, Papadopoulos, & Kaltsatou, 2008; Williams & Pedersen, 2012; Williams, Pedersen, & Walsh, 2012), and have conceptualized emblem equity in campus recreational sports (Robinson & Gladden, 2003; Mills & Williams, 2016).
Although Keller and Aaker’s models were utilized because the theoretical framework for preceding brand equity fashions in sport, Berry (2000) argued that this conceptualization may not be suitable for carrier-oriented brands due to the fact the center product is intangible and inherently tough to distinguish. Therefore, future research must recall making use of Berry’s emblem fairness framework to ladies’s sports activities.
METHOD
Primary and secondary channels of information had been accessed through a overview of sport management journals. Seven journals have been diagnosed: (Journal of Sport Management, Sport Management Review, Sport Marketing Quarterly, European Sport Management Review, International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing, International Journal of Sport Management and Sponsorship, and International Journal of Sport Management). These seven journals have been decided on primarily based upon Shilbury’s (2011a, 2011b) bibliometric evaluation of the field of game management which recognized these retailers as the leading publications in terms of pleasant and longevity. Additionally, Google Scholar turned into used to look for relevant publications. Search terms covered: branding and women’s sports activities, brand fairness and ladies’s sports activities. The use of primary and secondary channels of records to discover articles for evaluate aligns with Cornwell and Maignan’s (1998) approach. In overall, 11 articles were covered in the evaluation with booklet dates ranging from 2008-2018.
RESULTS
Three classes of research had been identified: personal branding, group branding, and media coverage. Personal branding pertains to expert lady athletes at the same time as studies associated with team branding has investigated brand fairness amongst expert girls’s sports teams (i.E., internet ball, football). The very last category of studies examined the relationship among media insurance and branding opportunities for women’s sports.
Specifically, non-public branding pertains to studies that have examined the processes and barriers that female athletes face (Lobpries et al., 2018; Parris et al., 2014). This consists of how woman athletes represent themselves on social media as well as the goods and agencies they advocate (Cortsen, 2013; Toffoleti & Thorpe, 2018).
The subsequent category relates to branding in professional ladies’s sports activities groups consists of a rebranding case that suggests increases in crew logo equity due to the introduction of a new product (Cortsen, 2017), as well as advertising trends and photo perceptions (Mårtensson, 2010). Additionally, this class of research investigates logo fairness constructs along with logo personality or associations of a professional girls’s netball group (Heere, 2017). Moreover, this specific studies explores connections between gendered brands (i.E., WNBA), self-logo connections and mindset strength (Moore & Homer, 2008).
The closing class addresses research that analyzes media insurance of intercollegiate sport teams. The research examined the quantity of coverage dedicated to women’s teams on athletic department websites (Cooper, 2008; 2009). Moreover, the authors of this research allude to importance of media coverage as an opportunity for branding girls’s sports activities.
The number one studies methods hired within the evaluation include: surveys, questionnaires, interviews, consciousness businesses, case studies, and concept list. The secondary research techniques employed within the assessment encompass: content material evaluation. Lastly, conceptual research included articles wherein scholars strengthen their ideas based totally on theory, traits and ideas with out presentation of empirical facts. The following desk presents a precis of the studies assessed in the study.