The Integrated Conceptual Framework for Understanding Perceived Brand Equity in Professional Sports Teams

Abstract

Although the subject of perceived brand equity in professional sport has been subjected to substantial academic research, there are notable inconsistencies on the dimensions, antecedents and market consequences of brand equity in existing sport brand equity conceptual frameworks. This paper proposes the “Integrated Con-ceptual Framework for Understanding Perceived Brand Equity in Professional Sports Teams” as a contribution towards developing a conceptual understanding that can bridge existing conceptual inconsistencies in the subject area. The Framework was developed from the research findings of an exploratory sequential mixed methods study which was conducted in Zimbabwe, following an extensive review of existing sports brand equity conceptual frameworks. The Framework classifies the antecedents of perceived brand equity in professional sports teams into “Experience-Induced Antecedents”, “Macro Marketing Environment-Induced Antecedents” and “Management-Induced Antecedents”. These antecedents do not apply uniformly across different sport settings. As a results, the different conceptualizations of the antecedents of sports team brand equity in existing conceptual frameworks can be partly attributed to the fact that the frameworks were derived from studies that were carried out in different sport settings. In some cases, there are no tangible content differences, the inconsistences are only in terms of the narrations used to describe the antecedents by different scholars. Dimensionally, the proposed Integrated Conceptual Framework for Understanding Perceived Brand Equity in Professional Sports Teams departs from this traditional conceptualizations of the dimensions of brand equity by noting that team sport brand equity is an aggregate of Brand Awareness, Brand Associations and Brand Relationship. Thus, the framework views Brand Relationship as an additional brand equity dimension, an insight that has not been explicitly captured in existing conceptual frameworks. The Conceptual Framework also illustrates how perceived professional sports team brand equity can generate negative and positive marketplace outcomes. The Proposed Framework supports the theoretical foundations on the dimensions, antecedents and market consequences of sports team brand equity captured in existing literature and goes further to provide new insights and an improved theoretical understanding of these elements.

Keywords: Experience-Induced Antecedents, Macro Marketing Environment-Induced Antecedents, Management-Induced Antecedents, Dimensions of Perceived Brand Equity and Market Consequences of Perceived Brand Equity

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