Social media allows sport entities (organizations, athletes, coaches, fans, and partnering companies) to reach audiences across the world and create, extend, maintain, and improve their brand equity through constant communication. Brand management and the strategies employed by entities to create effective content that reinforces brand image and brand equity are a common goal among sport marketers. Over the last 20 years, scholars have investigated a wide range of topics in sport social media and branding, yet there is a need to continue to expand the social media brand management literature to address and reflect rapidly changing industry challenges. The purpose of this commentary is to provide a reflection of past academic literature, while critically examining areas in methodology and theory to guide future research. The recommendations of more sophisticated designs, along with a call for experimental designs, qualitative approaches, and critical communication inquiry, among others, are discussed.
{"title":"Brand Management and Social Media","authors":"Beth A. Cianfrone","doi":"10.1123/ijsc.2023-0154","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1123/ijsc.2023-0154","url":null,"abstract":"Social media allows sport entities (organizations, athletes, coaches, fans, and partnering companies) to reach audiences across the world and create, extend, maintain, and improve their brand equity through constant communication. Brand management and the strategies employed by entities to create effective content that reinforces brand image and brand equity are a common goal among sport marketers. Over the last 20 years, scholars have investigated a wide range of topics in sport social media and branding, yet there is a need to continue to expand the social media brand management literature to address and reflect rapidly changing industry challenges. The purpose of this commentary is to provide a reflection of past academic literature, while critically examining areas in methodology and theory to guide future research. The recommendations of more sophisticated designs, along with a call for experimental designs, qualitative approaches, and critical communication inquiry, among others, are discussed.","PeriodicalId":43939,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Sport Communication","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87968839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Luke A. Winslow, Blair W. Browning, Andrew W. Ishak
Style—or the aesthetic dimensions of public presentation—is a dominant mode of symbolic expression. However, no one has explored how style functions as a coherent and generalizable symbol system influencing public conversations about athletic recruitment. The purpose of this essay is to fill this gap by developing a critical framework for theorizing the rhetoric of style in athletic recruitment discourse and significantly, how this is done through social media. We analyze sports journalism, recruiting websites, and the public messaging of athletic departments and athletes on social media according to five structural components: stylistic homologies, aesthetic rationales, primacy of text, imaginary communities, and market contexts. Our analysis offers practical lessons for athletes, journalists, and college athletic departments, but we also highlight several conceptual, methodological, and theoretical implications for scholars of communication and sport and social media interested in better understanding social influence in a dynamic and hyper-competitive context.
{"title":"Swag, Social Media, and the Rhetoric of Style in College Athletic-Recruitment Discourse","authors":"Luke A. Winslow, Blair W. Browning, Andrew W. Ishak","doi":"10.1123/ijsc.2023-0168","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1123/ijsc.2023-0168","url":null,"abstract":"Style—or the aesthetic dimensions of public presentation—is a dominant mode of symbolic expression. However, no one has explored how style functions as a coherent and generalizable symbol system influencing public conversations about athletic recruitment. The purpose of this essay is to fill this gap by developing a critical framework for theorizing the rhetoric of style in athletic recruitment discourse and significantly, how this is done through social media. We analyze sports journalism, recruiting websites, and the public messaging of athletic departments and athletes on social media according to five structural components: stylistic homologies, aesthetic rationales, primacy of text, imaginary communities, and market contexts. Our analysis offers practical lessons for athletes, journalists, and college athletic departments, but we also highlight several conceptual, methodological, and theoretical implications for scholars of communication and sport and social media interested in better understanding social influence in a dynamic and hyper-competitive context.","PeriodicalId":43939,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Sport Communication","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82605524","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sanghoon Kim, Kwang-Hae Park, Jun-Phil Uhm, Hyun-Woo Lee
The purpose of this study was to examine the determinants of sport consumers’ mobile ticketing adoption by the technology readiness constructs and quality–satisfaction–behavioral intentions framework. A total of 295 participants were included in the analysis. Data analysis was performed using structural equation modeling and PROCESS macro. A content analysis was conducted to provide further insight into the proposed model using open-ended responses. The findings indicate that consumers’ technology readiness alone was not a positive driver of mobile ticketing but suggest a role for technology readiness in promoting mobile ticketing, combined with service quality, satisfaction, and online ticket purchasing. The importance and originality of this study are that it confirms the sport context as a unique and effective vehicle in advancing existing knowledge of consumers’ ticket consumption behavior via self-service technology across various disciplines. Also, the findings can be used to set out recommendations for policy or practice aimed at facilitating and sustaining mobile ticketing consumption.
{"title":"Determinants of Consumers’ Adoption of Mobile Ticketing via Self-Service Technology","authors":"Sanghoon Kim, Kwang-Hae Park, Jun-Phil Uhm, Hyun-Woo Lee","doi":"10.1123/ijsc.2023-0185","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1123/ijsc.2023-0185","url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of this study was to examine the determinants of sport consumers’ mobile ticketing adoption by the technology readiness constructs and quality–satisfaction–behavioral intentions framework. A total of 295 participants were included in the analysis. Data analysis was performed using structural equation modeling and PROCESS macro. A content analysis was conducted to provide further insight into the proposed model using open-ended responses. The findings indicate that consumers’ technology readiness alone was not a positive driver of mobile ticketing but suggest a role for technology readiness in promoting mobile ticketing, combined with service quality, satisfaction, and online ticket purchasing. The importance and originality of this study are that it confirms the sport context as a unique and effective vehicle in advancing existing knowledge of consumers’ ticket consumption behavior via self-service technology across various disciplines. Also, the findings can be used to set out recommendations for policy or practice aimed at facilitating and sustaining mobile ticketing consumption.","PeriodicalId":43939,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Sport Communication","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78515750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Research on brand communities has burgeoned over the past 2 decades. Today many, if not most, sport organizations are entertaining dedicated brand communities. This article traces the development of community thinking in the field of sport management and marketing. Key articles on brand communities in leading journals in the field are identified, reviewed, and their core contributions distilled. By drawing on literature from adjacent fields, seven areas of future research are proposed: make or buy community, getting value from community, building a community capability, solving the community engagement puzzle, focusing on effective community engagement practices, analyzing the full community life cycle, and community for Web 3.0. The article provides a number of recommendations for future research on brand communities in sport management and marketing, enabling scholars to advance knowledge for both research and practice.
{"title":"A Review and Research Agenda for Brand Communities in Sports","authors":"David Wagner","doi":"10.1123/ijsc.2023-0114","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1123/ijsc.2023-0114","url":null,"abstract":"Research on brand communities has burgeoned over the past 2 decades. Today many, if not most, sport organizations are entertaining dedicated brand communities. This article traces the development of community thinking in the field of sport management and marketing. Key articles on brand communities in leading journals in the field are identified, reviewed, and their core contributions distilled. By drawing on literature from adjacent fields, seven areas of future research are proposed: make or buy community, getting value from community, building a community capability, solving the community engagement puzzle, focusing on effective community engagement practices, analyzing the full community life cycle, and community for Web 3.0. The article provides a number of recommendations for future research on brand communities in sport management and marketing, enabling scholars to advance knowledge for both research and practice.","PeriodicalId":43939,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Sport Communication","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83717442","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The topics of social media and consumer behavior are inextricably linked. Since 2008, scholars in sport-studies fields such as sport communication and sport management have increasingly focused their research on social media use by sport entities and consumers. This commentary provides an overview of sport social media and consumer behavior scholarship to date, including prominent and growing topics such as consumers’ uses of social media, social media engagement, user segmentation, and user-generated content. A scoping review was conducted to illustrate the current state of research on social media, sport, and consumer behavior. Future research priorities to advance this area of inquiry are also discussed, including more qualitative research resulting in rich and descriptive analyses, the need to better understand Gen Z as sport social media consumers, and the need to understand the connection between social media consumption and purchasing behavior. Finally, the commentary encourages scholars to expand their research focus in geographic contexts outside of North America, on underrepresented groups, such as women’s sport and disability sport, and to adopt new theoretical frameworks for such research.
{"title":"Social Media and Consumer Behavior","authors":"Andrea N. Geurin","doi":"10.1123/ijsc.2023-0110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1123/ijsc.2023-0110","url":null,"abstract":"The topics of social media and consumer behavior are inextricably linked. Since 2008, scholars in sport-studies fields such as sport communication and sport management have increasingly focused their research on social media use by sport entities and consumers. This commentary provides an overview of sport social media and consumer behavior scholarship to date, including prominent and growing topics such as consumers’ uses of social media, social media engagement, user segmentation, and user-generated content. A scoping review was conducted to illustrate the current state of research on social media, sport, and consumer behavior. Future research priorities to advance this area of inquiry are also discussed, including more qualitative research resulting in rich and descriptive analyses, the need to better understand Gen Z as sport social media consumers, and the need to understand the connection between social media consumption and purchasing behavior. Finally, the commentary encourages scholars to expand their research focus in geographic contexts outside of North America, on underrepresented groups, such as women’s sport and disability sport, and to adopt new theoretical frameworks for such research.","PeriodicalId":43939,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Sport Communication","volume":"65 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84369121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
To ensure that head coaches are effective in leading athletic programs, interscholastic athletic directors engage in a performance appraisal process that reviews coaching efforts. Given the demands of the athletic director role, these leaders are reliant on stakeholders to provide insight that informs the coaching evaluation. Therefore, using the tenets of stakeholder theory, the purpose of this study was to analyze the role that stakeholder feedback plays as athletic directors develop the full picture of coaching performance during an evaluation. Participants ( N = 25) featured high school athletic directors represented across school classification (i.e., 1A, 2A, 3A, and 4A) and school type (i.e., public and private). Through semistructured interviews and a subsequent thematic analysis, saturation was achieved at this sample size. Two main themes (i.e., main stakeholder groups and leveraging stakeholder feedback) emerged and demonstrate how key stakeholders should be considered as important sources of information guiding interscholastic athletic directors when leading coaching evaluations.
{"title":"Examining How High School Athletic Directors Leverage Communication With Key Stakeholder Groups to Inform Performance Appraisals of Head Coaches","authors":"Tyler Ratts","doi":"10.1123/ijsc.2023-0243","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1123/ijsc.2023-0243","url":null,"abstract":"To ensure that head coaches are effective in leading athletic programs, interscholastic athletic directors engage in a performance appraisal process that reviews coaching efforts. Given the demands of the athletic director role, these leaders are reliant on stakeholders to provide insight that informs the coaching evaluation. Therefore, using the tenets of stakeholder theory, the purpose of this study was to analyze the role that stakeholder feedback plays as athletic directors develop the full picture of coaching performance during an evaluation. Participants ( N = 25) featured high school athletic directors represented across school classification (i.e., 1A, 2A, 3A, and 4A) and school type (i.e., public and private). Through semistructured interviews and a subsequent thematic analysis, saturation was achieved at this sample size. Two main themes (i.e., main stakeholder groups and leveraging stakeholder feedback) emerged and demonstrate how key stakeholders should be considered as important sources of information guiding interscholastic athletic directors when leading coaching evaluations.","PeriodicalId":43939,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Sport Communication","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135501556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Online fan communities on social media are an effective avenue for sport organizations to engage sport fans. Sport fans who identify with online fan communities express positive and negative consumer engagement behavior (CEB) on social media. Most researchers focus on the positive valence of CEB. This study explores the mediating effect of both positive and negative valences of CEB between online fan community identification and behavioral intention simultaneously. Additionally, the moderating effect of satisfaction with teams’ performance is examined. This study contributes to the conceptualization of the negative valence of CEB on social media and extends the literature on the dual valence of CEB in the sport context. It also provides insights to sport managers on relationship marketing on social media.
{"title":"Consumer Engagement on Weibo in a Professional Sport Context: The Case of the Chinese Super League","authors":"Yuanyuan Cao, Ziyuan Xu, Hirotaka Matsuoka","doi":"10.1123/ijsc.2023-0162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1123/ijsc.2023-0162","url":null,"abstract":"Online fan communities on social media are an effective avenue for sport organizations to engage sport fans. Sport fans who identify with online fan communities express positive and negative consumer engagement behavior (CEB) on social media. Most researchers focus on the positive valence of CEB. This study explores the mediating effect of both positive and negative valences of CEB between online fan community identification and behavioral intention simultaneously. Additionally, the moderating effect of satisfaction with teams’ performance is examined. This study contributes to the conceptualization of the negative valence of CEB on social media and extends the literature on the dual valence of CEB in the sport context. It also provides insights to sport managers on relationship marketing on social media.","PeriodicalId":43939,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Sport Communication","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74341868","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The gendered experiences of women working in sports media have been the subject of growing research, particularly in the United States, but cases are emerging in other contexts. This paper examines the strategies used by seven women working in sports media in the United Kingdom and Ireland to deal with undesirable audience interactions, both online and in person. With emotional labor as an overarching framework, semistructured interviews interviews were conducted and reflexive thematic analysis was used to construct two themes: internal and external responses. The study reveals the additional self-regulated emotional burden carried by women working in sports media and the strategies used to cope. Women in sports media publicly downplay their mistreatment and have not yet embraced the reporting of gendered practices in the workplace. The findings contribute to a growing body of literature that sheds light on the experiences of women in sports media and offer insights for women working in the industry and their employers.
{"title":"“I’m Obviously a Sucker for Punishment”: Responses to Audience Interactions Used by Women Working in Sports Media","authors":"N. Kitching, Aoife Sheehan","doi":"10.1123/ijsc.2023-0173","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1123/ijsc.2023-0173","url":null,"abstract":"The gendered experiences of women working in sports media have been the subject of growing research, particularly in the United States, but cases are emerging in other contexts. This paper examines the strategies used by seven women working in sports media in the United Kingdom and Ireland to deal with undesirable audience interactions, both online and in person. With emotional labor as an overarching framework, semistructured interviews interviews were conducted and reflexive thematic analysis was used to construct two themes: internal and external responses. The study reveals the additional self-regulated emotional burden carried by women working in sports media and the strategies used to cope. Women in sports media publicly downplay their mistreatment and have not yet embraced the reporting of gendered practices in the workplace. The findings contribute to a growing body of literature that sheds light on the experiences of women in sports media and offer insights for women working in the industry and their employers.","PeriodicalId":43939,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Sport Communication","volume":"42 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78163322","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The use of social media is reflective of an individual’s culture. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of the cultural context on Australian and Singaporean sportswomen’s uses of social media. In-depth interviews with 12 elite sportswomen from both countries combined with supplementary information collected through the participating athletes’ Instagram profiles showed that social media uses are influenced by uncertainty avoidance, individualism or collectivism, masculinity or femininity, and long- or short-term orientations. By applying Hofstede and Bond’s cultural dimensions framework, the study presents new knowledge on three cultural dimensions (i.e., uncertainty avoidance, masculinity vs. femininity, and long-term vs. short-term orientation) and broadens the field of sport and social media by comparing the use of social media between athletes from diverse cultures. The study offers significant insight for designing a branding strategy that encompasses cultural contexts to guide athletes on their use of social media.
{"title":"The Role of Culture in Using Social Media in Sport: The Case of Australian and Singaporean Elite Sportswomen","authors":"Popi Sotiriadou, Leah Brokmann, J. Doyle","doi":"10.1123/ijsc.2022-0163","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1123/ijsc.2022-0163","url":null,"abstract":"The use of social media is reflective of an individual’s culture. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of the cultural context on Australian and Singaporean sportswomen’s uses of social media. In-depth interviews with 12 elite sportswomen from both countries combined with supplementary information collected through the participating athletes’ Instagram profiles showed that social media uses are influenced by uncertainty avoidance, individualism or collectivism, masculinity or femininity, and long- or short-term orientations. By applying Hofstede and Bond’s cultural dimensions framework, the study presents new knowledge on three cultural dimensions (i.e., uncertainty avoidance, masculinity vs. femininity, and long-term vs. short-term orientation) and broadens the field of sport and social media by comparing the use of social media between athletes from diverse cultures. The study offers significant insight for designing a branding strategy that encompasses cultural contexts to guide athletes on their use of social media.","PeriodicalId":43939,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Sport Communication","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90970712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rebecca M. Achen, Ashley Stadler-Blank, John J. Sailors
The academic literature reports mixed evidence on how social media platform and message impact consumer engagement. We investigated the effects of three platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) and three message themes (sales, informational, and relationship building) on six consumer engagement actions (comment, like, search, share, talk about, and purchase) in a lab experiment. College students responded to social media posts featuring their National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I women’s basketball team. Results for platform show that participants were more likely to comment on Facebook and Twitter (vs. Instagram) and more likely to purchase on Twitter (vs. Instagram). Results for message theme show that participants were more likely to comment, like, and share informational and relationship building posts and more likely to purchase after sales posts. Results for message theme vary by gender for search and talk about (with others). These results can help sport marketers develop social media content that drives specific engagement actions.
{"title":"I “Like” It: The Effects of Social Media Platform and Message on Consumer Engagement Actions","authors":"Rebecca M. Achen, Ashley Stadler-Blank, John J. Sailors","doi":"10.1123/ijsc.2023-0125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1123/ijsc.2023-0125","url":null,"abstract":"The academic literature reports mixed evidence on how social media platform and message impact consumer engagement. We investigated the effects of three platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) and three message themes (sales, informational, and relationship building) on six consumer engagement actions (comment, like, search, share, talk about, and purchase) in a lab experiment. College students responded to social media posts featuring their National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I women’s basketball team. Results for platform show that participants were more likely to comment on Facebook and Twitter (vs. Instagram) and more likely to purchase on Twitter (vs. Instagram). Results for message theme show that participants were more likely to comment, like, and share informational and relationship building posts and more likely to purchase after sales posts. Results for message theme vary by gender for search and talk about (with others). These results can help sport marketers develop social media content that drives specific engagement actions.","PeriodicalId":43939,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Sport Communication","volume":"33 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89764441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}