Master Thesis A study on team sport spectators: Attracting Danish low-high involved spectators to handball using motivational motives and team brand associations Sissi Vestergaard Supervisor: Søren Biune Number of pages: 78 Characters including spaces: 174.536 Copenhagen Business School Master of Science in Economics and Business Administration Concentration: Marketing Communications Management Deadline: December 9, 2013 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The overall aim of this thesis is to investigate how Danish male handball league teams can attract spectator to their arena using motivational motives and brand associations. The objective for these teams’ marketers is, to gain insight into the handball consumers and understand how they can attract them, dependent on their psychological involvement with the team. Through reviewing and exploring relevant studies and literature, a theoretical framework was developed to based this investigation on along with developing the deduced sub research questions that was going to lead this investigation. A cross-sectional research design consisting of quantitative questionnaire, which also include a qualitative tool to collect free listed brand associations, was used to explore the scope of research along with expert interviews to get a better understanding of the handball market. The questionnaire was set up with valid measurements to help explain the relationship between the variables, motives and purchase intent, and brand associations and purchase intent. For motivational motives the findings revealed were, that the most important motive was excitement as it was found present in all four PCM segments. However it is important to notice that consumer by different underlying motives and reasons, dependent on their level of involvement. In the awareness stage entertainment was also found to be an important motive, and in the attraction stage motives for performance should also be considered. The findings revealed for brand associations, were only relevant for teams like BSV, Skjern H., GOG and KIF KK. Nine Handball Team Brand Associations (HTBA) were revealed and most of them could indirectly influence consumers purchase intent for each team, however the findings differ from one team to another. KIF KK’s brand associations were evaluated and found strong, favourable and unique, if individual brand associations within the categories were considered. The research findings provide useful insight for handball team marketers wondering how to attract spectators to their arenas. However further research, like qualitative interviews, should be conducted to gain a better understanding for underlying motives behind the important motivational motives as well as the brand associations perceived by the consumer. 2 TABLES & FIGURES Table 1a: Overview of TAM and TBAS’ team brand associations Table 1b: Team Brand associations identified in the handball context Table 2: Comparison of Guba and Thurén. Table 3: Comparison of spectator development in male soccer (”Superliga”), male handball (”håndboldliga”) and male icehockey (”Al-bank ligaen”) in Denmark. Table 4: Summary of represented respondents in PCM segments Table 5: Summary of ”overall motives explaining ticket purchase” Table 6: Summary of ”motives explaining ticket sales within each PCM segment” Table 7: Overview of possible underlying motives Table 8: Summary of overall attitude towards teams influence on PI for each team Table 9: Summary of attitude towards team influence on PI for each team’s PCM segment Table 10: Summary of brand associations equal influence on ATT Table 11: KIF KK’s HTBA mean score (frequency) Table 12: Summary of frequent HTBAs that influence ATT significantly and favorably Table 13: Top 5 teams recalled when cued by ”Danish male team” Table 14: Top 5 league teams recognized among 21 mixed Danish handball teams Table 15: Comparison of the five teams HTBAs in percentage Figure 1: Thesis progression Figure 2: Psychological Continuum Model Figure 3: The Customer-based Brand Equity model Figure 4: Spectator development on the Danish Handball market (including male, female, League and 1. Division) Figure 5: Overview of analysis 3 ABBREVIATIONS & ACRONYMS CBBE Customer-based Brand Equity HTBA Handball Team Brand Associations PCM Psychological Continuum Model PI Purchase Intent SPSS Statistical Package for the Social Science TAM Team Association Model TBA Team Brand Associations TBAS Team Brand Association Scale League teams AGK AG København BSV Bjerringbro-Silkeborg(-Voel) Elitehåndbold GOG Gudme Oure Gudbjerg KIF KK KIF Kolding København Skjern H. Skjern Håndbold TTH Team Tvis Holstebro 4 TABLE OF CONTENT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 2 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 7 1.1 Thesis scope and the main research questions 8 1.1.1 Sub research questions 8 1.2 Delimitations 10 1.3 Thesis structure 11 CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 12 2.1 The involvement of a sport spectator 12 2.1.1 Psychological Continuum Model 12 2.1.1.1 Awareness 13 2.1.1.2 Attraction 13 2.1.1.3 Attachment 14 2.1.1.4 Allegiance 14 2.2 SPEED motives 15 2.3 Brand knowledge 17 2.3.1 Customer-based Brand Equity 2.3.1.1 Brand identity 18 2.3.1.2 Brand meaning 19 2.3.2 Brand associations in sports 19 2.3.2.1 Two team brand association models: TAM and TBAS 20 2.3.2.2 Brand attitudes and purchase intent 22 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 24 3.1 Philosophy of science 24 3.1.1 Neo-positivistic approach 26 3.2 Research approach 27 3.3 Research design 27 3.3.1 Research type and methodological choice 27 3.3.2 Secondary data 28 3.3.3 Primary and secondary sources 29 3.3.4 Expert interviews 29 3.3.4.1 KIF KK manager, Jens Boesen 29 3.3.4.2 Market expert & Hbold.dk owner, Jens Petersen 30 3.3.5 Online questionnaire 30 3.3.5.1 Questions 30 3.3.5.2 Measurements 31 3.3.5.3 Pilot study 32 3.3.5.4 Participant limitations 32 3.3.5.5 Motivational trigger 32 3.3.5.6 Survey tool 32 3.3.6 Limitations 33 3.4 Data analysis 33 3.5 Assessment criteria: validity and reliability 34 3.6 Ethical considerations 36 5 CHAPTER 4: THE DANISH HANDBALL MARKET AND KIF KK 37 1.1 The Danish male handball market and its potential 37 1.2 KIF Kolding København 38 1.2.1 Objectives and challenges 39 1.2.2 Competitors 39 1.2.3 Economy 39 CHAPTER 5: ANALYSIS 41 5.1 Introducing the segmented survey respondents 41 5.2 PART 1: Identifying the motivational motives 42 5.2.2 Segmented motives 43 5.3 PART II: Brand associations 49 5.3.1 Brand attitudes influence on purchase intent 50 5.3.1.1 Attitudes’ influence on PI in PCM segments 51 5.3.2 Categorizing brand associations 54 5.3.3 Handball Team Brand Associations driving brand attitude 57 5.3.3.1 Brand associations influence on attitude in PCM segments 62 5.3.4 Evaluating KIF KK’s brand knowledge 63 5.3.4.1 Brand awareness 64 5.3.4.2 Brand image 65 CHAPTER 6: DISCUSSION AND MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS 67 6.1 Discussion 67 6.2 Managerial implications for League teams 68 6.2.2 Overall recommendations based on motivational motives 69 6.2.3 Three individual team recommendations based on HTBAs 71 6.2.4 Case company recommendations: KIF KK 72 6.2.4.1 Building the KIF KK brand 74 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION 75 8.1 Assessment criteria: Validity and reliability 75 8.2 Motivational motives 76 8.3 Brand associations 77 8.3.1 How attitude influence purchase intent 78 8.3.2 Which team brand associations influence attitude towards the team 78 8.3.2.1 Evaluating KIF KK’s brand associations 79 8.4 answering the main research question 80 LIST OF REFERENCES 81 LIST OF APPENDICES 87 6 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Handball is a ball sport invented by Danes in the late 1800, officially by a Danish teacher by the name of Holger Nielsen, who proposed the first set of rules in 1906 (Borberg, 2009). It has been played in barns and outside on fields and by the Danish army in an arena almost as we know it today. It has developed from being a folksy culture enjoyed as amateurism and as a way to socialize with the other locals into a modern and deeply professional experience industry which was especially due to the new training methods invented throughout the 1980s (Borberg, 2009). In Denmark it is the second most popular sport only surpassed by football and pursued by ice hockey. The interest for male handball has increased over the past seven years along with the national male team becoming successful and popular especially after winning the European Championship in 2008 (Petersen, 2013). TV stations are showing more games hence keeping spectators at home, which along with less lucrative TV agreements make league teams suffer financially. A lack of spectators in the arena does not only have a negative impact on the economy; their onsite support for the teams is also important. Many coaches, team managers and players agree that a top-level performance is key to winning a game but the audience’s supportive atmosphere does too have an impact as it shakes the opponent (Nielsen, 2013). In 2010 when the new League team, AG København (hereafter: AGK), emerged they showed it was possible to attract consumers from another marked – the entertainment industry. It has always been said it was impossible to attract spectators around Copenhagen but AGK showed how and indicated that sport marketers in handball must rethink their marketing strategy and move away from the traditional thinking. After AGK went bankrupt KIF Kolding København (hereafter: KIF KK) took over but they are still struggling with how to attract more spectators. Looking into the sport literature there are many ways to attract spectators but the two that this thesis will research are motivational motives, as motivational patterns are found to be important (Wenner and Gantz,1989), and brand assocations, as the sport brand too is found to be highly important (Bauer et.al, 2005).