Consumer consideration of sponsor brands they do not remember

Abstract

Extending findings from advertising to sponsorship, this study evaluates explicit and implicit sponsorship memorisation effects. A survey of 584 spectators of a tennis tournament reveals that both types of memorisation effects (co)exist. Even when spectators do not recognise a brand as an event sponsor, they include it more often in their consideration set than do spectators who have not been exposed to the sponsor brand. Sponsorship also reduces the number of main competitor brands in the spectators’ consideration sets. However, these effects emerge only at the level of perceptual implicit memory, not in conceptual implicit memory. The results are encouraging for sponsor companies and call for a change in evaluations of sponsorship memorisation effects.