SPONSORSHIP

Brand recognition and brand association for sponsoring athletes.



Brand recognition and brand association for sponsoring athletes.

As the rivalry amid the businesses is growing powerful, more businesses are making endeavours to unveil approaches for enhancing their brands image, and inducing the customers to purchase their products or services. Sponsorship of sports events is a rising idea which has procured increased awareness in a few decades. Formally, corporate sponsorship can be explained as any type of deal either in cash or non cash forms, for gaining access in any activity for achieving advantage of the public potential linked with that specific activity (Meenaghan, 2001, 95).

Sports sponsorship has achieved high concentration from businesses because of its flexibility to target a large audience at a low cost. Businesses seek to develop their brand awareness in huge sports events, due to the ease of sending marketing messages to a number of defined audiences, in a short occasion. Businesses can also gain an access to a large audience having parallel demographics (Dees et al., 2008, 79). A chief reason for sponsoring athletes is to enable the viewers to develop encouraging feeling concerning the product of sponsoring company. This enables a business to gain advantage by associating the image of athletes with their products, so that consumers can develop a similar image for a company's products. (Meenaghan, 2001, 95).

Sponsorship of athletes enables a business to develop goodwill Brand recognition and brand association amid the audience (Meenaghan, 2001, 95) and so large investments in this area have become an integral part of promotions mix (Yong Jae et al., 2008). The idea of sponsoring sports and athletes dates back to 1896 (Lague, 2005). Although the concept has prevailed in the society for decades, however, its importance has escalated over the last decade's e to the ease of reaching people of various classes on a wider level (Chadwick, 1995). Sponsoring athletes also helps to bring larger audience providing more media coverage (Marshall and Cook, 1992, 307). Fill (2002) asserted sponsorship as an opportunity to confiscate the harmful perceptions held by audience for a specific brand.

Sponsoring athletes is an important aspect for improving corporate image and raising brand awareness. Sponsorship helps organizations to gain an understanding of customer responses to their brands. By sponsoring athletes, organizational attempt to associate their brands with the athletes or the events that they are sponsoring. When people see the brands promoting some particular athletes ...