Sponsorship recall and recognition: The case of the 2007 Cricket World Cup

C Boshoff,C Gerber

doi:10.4102/sajbm.v39i2.556

Abstract

Millions of rands are spent on sponsorship in general every year, and on sports sponsorships in particular. Yet little is known about the effectiveness of this expenditure. In addition, sponsors are often not sure whether only their brands benefit from a sponsorship or whether competing brands in the same product category also benefit from their efforts.In this study an attempt is made to clarify these considerations by comparing both the brand recall and the brand recognition of companies (and brands) who sponsored the 2007 Cricket World Cup. To determine whether brand recall and brand recognition increased during a sponsorship campaign, a quasi-experimental study was conducted by means of a one-group pre-test-post-test design. The data were collected using a convenience sample of 131 undergraduate students.The results seem to suggest that both the brand recall and the brand recognition levels of the sponsors increased significantly (α = 0,05), but that neither the brand recall nor the brand recognition levels of non-sponsor brands increased. The results therefore show that sponsorship does in fact increase brand awareness, by significantly increasing unaided brand recall, as well as increasing brand recognition and that non-sponsoring companies and brands do not benefit indirectly from their competitors’ sponsorships in terms of brand recall and brand recognition.

Highlights

Marketing can be described as a business function facilitating the exchange process between buyers and sellers by examining the needs and wants of consumers, developing a product or service that satisfies these needs, offering it at an appropriate price, making it available at a particular place or through a channel of distribution, and developing a programme of communication to create awareness and interest (Belch & Belch, 2004: 8)
As pointed out above, enhanced brand awareness has long been one of the key objectives sought by sponsors, and is still in many cases the only benefit sought (Duffy & Hooper, 2003)
H2: Brand recognition prior to the 2007 Cricket World Cup is less than brand recall after the 2007 Cricket World Cup for sponsor brands

Summary

Introduction

Marketing can be described as a business function facilitating the exchange process between buyers and sellers by examining the needs and wants of consumers, developing a product or service that satisfies these needs, offering it at an appropriate price, making it available at a particular place or through a channel of distribution, and developing a programme of communication to create awareness and interest (Belch & Belch, 2004: 8) This description of what marketing is shows that the ability to communicate effectively and efficiently with consumers is critical to the success of both the marketing effort and eventually the entire firm. Given the incongruous forces of the growing importance of marketing communications on the one hand and the threat of “information overload” on the other hand, marketers are constantly on the look-out for new, ingenious ways to cut through the clutter, and communicate with the chosen target market

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Conclusion