Conceptualization and alternate operationalizations of the measurement of sponsorship effectiveness in sport

A model that integrates the communication and product adoption processes is developed and is used to evaluate the effectiveness of alternate measures of sponsorship. The further through the communication process an evaluation takes place, the stronger is the evidence of a sponsorship’s contribution to increasing sales. The most frequently used sponsorship measure is media equivalency values. These frequently inflate the real value of media coverage. Further, this approach is fundamentally conceptually flawed because it measures only the extent of media output and offers no insight as to whether people absorbed the message. Studies measuring changes in consumers’ awareness usually rely on people’s recall of a sponsor’s name being associated with an event, but recall is notoriously faulty. Image enhancement is a state closer to assessing impact on sales and is best measured by ‘strength of link’, reflecting the extent to which a brand has borrowed an event’s image. Intent-to-purchase studies are the stage immediately preceding sales and can be done by surveying audiences and identifying their brand and product desires and their purchase habits. The most desirable measure from a sponsor’s perspective is impact on sales, which may be expressed as: (i) increases in traffic at retail points of sale; (ii) number of new sales leads created; or (iii) actual increase in sales associated with a sponsorship.