Branding of Sport Teams: Re-conceptualizing the Fan Based Brand-Equity Model

Abstract

Previous frameworks on brand-equity in team sports had relied heavily on Aaker (1991) or Keller (1993) models and had also restricted themselves not taking a holistic view of responsibility of teams’ management towards fans and society in order to attract and retain loyal fans. Although, Keller (2001) argued via his brand-equity pyramid the importance of holistic view of brand salience, brand performance, brand imagery, judgement, and customer feelings, coupled with brand resonance, for leveraging long-term loyalty of the customers. In the light of the above mentioned strengths, this study aims at applying Keller’s (2001) customer based brand-equity pyramid framework in context of sports marketing for building/ enhancing brand-equity of sport teams. It is argued that the first step for building strong brand-equity of sport teams starts with identifying their salience followed by teams performance and teams imagery (teams meaning), fans judgements and feelings (teams responses), and fans brand resonance (teams relationship with fans) building a team’s brand-equity pyramid. A framework, named as Fan Based Brand-Equity Pyramid, is suggested and the consequences of building strong brand-equity are also discussed. The framework provides useful insights to the sport team managers to build the fan based brand-equity.

Keywords: Brand-Equity, Fans, Sports Marketing, Sport Teams, Team Branding

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