Structural Model of the Role of Brand Trust on Brand Identity through the Mediating Role of Brand Love among Fans of Futsal Premier League Clubs in Iran

Background. Sports brand love refers to the degree of passionate emotional attachment consumers feel towards a sports team. Brand able to be more competitive by establishing the strong brand love of the customers as well as brand identity and brand trust. Objectives. The purpose of this research is to present a model of the role of brand trust on brand identity through the mediating role of brand love among fans of Futsal premier league clubs. Methods. The present study is a descriptive-correlative research in compliance with existing standard case studies. The population of this research comprised of all fans of the Farsh Ara Mashhad club, among which 295 were selected according to the temporal and spatial domains of the study as the sample, utilizing simple random sampling method. In order to achieve the research goals, the moderated Brand Identity Questionnaire made by Meal and Ashforth (1992), Albert's Brand Love Questionnaire, 2010, and Ballester Brand Trust Questionnaire (2004) were used. Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics (structural equation modeling and path analysis) were used for data analysis at a significant level recorded as 0.05. Result. According to the value of the coefficient path between brand trust and brand identity recorded as 0.47, which is positive and the value of the t-statistics correspondence obtained as 2.09, with 95% confidence, the coefficient path at the error level recorded as 0.05 is significant. Furthermore, a significant relationship between brand trust and brand identity was confirmed and also according to the main hypothesis of the research, the path coefficient of the indirect relationship of brand trust, through the mediating variable of brand love on brand identity with the value 0.53 was also calculated and the main hypothesis of the research was confirmed. Conclusion. In general, investing on brand trust on behalf of the Futsal premier league clubs (especially Farsh Ara club) and in the following plan to increase the admiration of fans in creating and developing a brand identity is one of the significant results mentioned in this research.