Understanding the Dynamics of Brand Loyalty in National team sports - A Qualitative study of brand management within professional team sports”

Sammanfattning: In previous research there has been acknowledgement about the importance of Brand loyalty in sports, where the brand experience can function as a tool to create loyalty among fans. Brand communities have proven to have positive effects on customer satisfaction and brand loyalty in sports. There is also previous evidence of consumers showing significantly less brand loyalty towards low quality products, contrariwise professional sports fans, who show strong loyalty to professional sports teams regardless of the team’s performance. However, we found out that the combination of brand communities and brand experience has not been researched to the extent that it is creating a deeper knowledge of the fans behavior to become loyal. The purpose of our study is, therefore, to examine how the concepts of brand experience and brand communities can start and increase the degrees of brand loyalty for professional team sport clubs. Where the combination of brand experience and brand communities function as tools to build up a larger fan-base for the clubs. We have chosen to conduct the study with a qualitative approach, where data was collected from the sample of respondents by using semi structured interviews. The criteria was that the respondents age gap was between 20 and 30 years old and that they had an interest in team sports. It was also beneficial if they had a background of sports. The importance of the brand experience and the discussions within the brand community were heavily determined by the degree of loyalty that was shown to the specific sport club. Where the enchantment of the brand experience could be seen when the social aspect of watching the games were involved. Also in the communities, where the social aspect functions as a tool to create involvement and strengthen relationships. Although brand loyalty can be seen to various degrees in our study, the common factors were the social environment and the gathering of information from the fans to increase loyalty. Our study aims to contribute to an increased understanding within sports club management on how to increase overall attendance at games and create more invested fans in the future. In the academical field we hope to give insight on how Brand Experience and Brand Communities can work together to build higher engagement and increased fan loyalty.