| dc.description.abstract | Sports sponsorship is an easy way to break into a new market and identify with the targeted audience (Earnheardt et al. 2011) However, despite the increasing resources being allocated from marketing budgets to sponsorship, effective evaluation is relatively rare (O’Reilly & Madill, 2012).
This study employed statistic test, Data Envelope Analysis (DEA), and Slack Analysis to explore the level of effectiveness of sports sponsorship by analyzing surveys conducted at Dodger Stadium in an attempt to quantify the success of sponsorship campaign between the Taiwan Tourism Bureau and the Los Angeles Dodgers. The participants were 297 attendees selected randomly at assigned location of Dodger Stadium while attending a Dodgers home game. During which Taiwan Tourism Bureau and Los Angeles Dodgers co-branded souvenirs were passed out, Taiwan interactive carnival booth was set up, Taiwan signage was displayed right behind the base. In addition, Taiwan logo and picture on around the stadium LED and Taiwan Tourism commercial on the jumbo tram were broadcasted twice during the game.
This study tested the effectiveness relationships between 9 sponsorship activities and willingness to visit Taiwan and Taiwan tourism awareness/brand image enhanced. There is strong correlation between Dodgers sponsorship and increased brand awareness for Taiwan Tourism Bureau. Accessing with DEA-BCC model, all activities’ technical efficiency scored 0.958 or higher. However, from mere exposure’s perspective, increased rate of exposure to TTB’s advertisements do not have an increase in the participants’ opinion on Taiwan Tourism’s brand image and awareness factor. Observing from the scale to return on DEA-BCC model, all sponsorship activities are either in constant return to scale or decreasing scale to return. These facts mean that the sponsorship mix has closed to its scale limit.
Other findings include the simple linear regression analyses indicated Dodgers fans’ favor to the team has successfully transferred to the team’s partner, Taiwan. In addition to die-hard fans and focused target fans’ favor to Taiwan, the female fans preferred to visit Taiwan. There is another interesting finding: based on t test, there is no significant difference between TV commercial and signage (or stadium TV clip, raiod ads) while employing DEA method can rank them according to different managerial purpose. Co-analyzing with statistics analysis and DEA method do bring more sufficient information for implementing managerial objectives.
Keywords: Sports Sponsorship, Mere Exposure Effect, Data Envelope Analysis, Slack Analysis. | en_US |