Purpose: To investigate how attitudes of hockey supporters change towards a sponsoring company depending on fan type and team commitment.
Background: Sponsorship has become a widely accepted and used as a communication tool. In Sweden, sponsoring is a large part of all advertising conducted in the country. Previous studies within the subject of sponsorship show that generally sponsorship is a good affair for companies that engage in it. When it comes to sports sponsorship, hockey is the most developed sport in Sweden.
Sports sponsorship is also an area where negative effects could occur due to sponsoring and the fact that many people are very passionate when it comes to sports and their favorite teams. Considering the massive amounts that companies invest in sponsoring it is of great interest to further investigate the effects of such activities. There is quite little research conducted within sports sponsoring in Sweden and therefore it is of interest both from businesses as well as the academic world to investigate the effects of sponsorship in a Swedish context. The main focus of this study is to investigate possible positive and negative attitudes towards sponsoring companies that sponsor different teams as well as effects on brand recall based on fan commitment.
Method: In order to answer the purpose of this thesis a deductive approach was applied by collecting quantitative data from an experiment, control group and a follow-up study. Theories and previous research in the subject area was used in order to establish hypothesis that later has been tested. The data retrieved through the research was processed and analyzed using SPSS.
Conclusion: The results show that attitudes towards the sponsor are positive when associated with the supported team and negative when associated with the rival team. Fans viewer frequency did not have a significant impact on positive attitudes towards the supported team while fan commitment had a strong impact on negative attitudes towards the sponsor of the rival team. Brand recall was higher with highly committed fans and is correlated with fan commitment. It is concluded that negative attitudes are easily invoked by fan commitment while it is not as easy to build positive attitude with repeated viewings.
Purpose: To explore and reveal specific factors that affect consumers’ environmental concern, attitude and intention to use carsharing.
Background: Due to the current environmental problems especially air pollution, the consumption of sustainable products has developed to be an upcoming trend. Consumers are increasingly concerned of the environmental issues and are more willing to act on those concerns. However, this willingness is not always translated into sustainable consumer behavior due to different reasons such as availability, affordability, convenience, product performance, skepticism and force of habit.
One of the examples of sustainable consumption is carsharing which is often referred to as an alternative to owning a car. The service is eco labeled and all the cars in the fleet are driven on alternative and environmentally friendly fuel. Carsharing in Sweden is not so developed as in other European countries and companies which provide this service predominantly turns to business companies and municipalities. There is quite little research conducted when it comes to carsharing use by private households. The main focus of this study is to look at carsharing as a part of the sustainable consumption, studying consumers’ environmental concern, attitude and intention to use carsharing.
Method: In order to answer the purpose a deductive approach has been applied where the data was collected through the questionnaires. Theories and previous research has been used in order to form the hypothesis which later has been tested. The data retrieved through the research has been processed and analyzed using SPSS software.
Conclusion: The results show that personal environmental concern has an influence on attitude and intention to use carsharing. Control beliefs and behavioral beliefs have a stronger impact on formation of attitude and intention compare to normative beliefs which has a low impact. Perceived consumer effectiveness has a strong impact on intention to sustainable behavior where respondents believe that carsharing can contribute to a better environment. Government regulations and information about the service are strong triggering factors for intention to use carsharing. The study showed that consumers have insufficient amount of information about carsharing service and indicate that local authorities and government should provide incentives in order to facilitate usage of this service.