Examining Sponsorship's Effectiveness Over the Internet: A Conceptual Framework for Researchers and Practitioners.

The aim of this research is to examine sport sponsorship's effectiveness over the internet. A conceptual framework for sponsorship evaluation over the internet was proposed, incorporating crucial factors such as supporters' beliefs about sponsorship, their satisfaction form the sport event as well as their degree of sport involvement, the usage of website and social media, awareness of and attitude toward real sponsoring firms and their actual and future purchase intentions concerning sponsors' goods and services. A quantitative method was used for the purpose of the current research and a total of 3434 questionnaires were successfully completed and analyzed. The empirical results indicated that sponsorship awareness impacts positively and significantly in both actual and intended purchase behavior of the respondents, suggesting that sponsorship awareness is the initial stage of a continuum of fans' responses that can lead to their purchase intentions and actual purchase. Evidence on this study contributes to the ongoing debate about sponsorship effectiveness and its implication on customer behavior and provides significant implications for managers wishing to improve their future revenues by investing in sponsorship deals, since sponsorship awareness is an important feature that managers must control in order to affect their customers purchasing decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]