An Understanding of Sports Sponsorship in India

An Understanding of Sports Sponsorship in India 1. Introduction The boost in competition, produced by the globalization of markets, had made the marketing mix a key factor for companies to be successful, or even to stay alive (Hollensen, 2003). Promotion has become ever more useful to have an effect on consumers’ attitudes and behaviour as a part of the marketing mix. Conventionally, promotion was consisted of advertising, PR and sales promotions (Vignali, 1997). Nevertheless, in modern years, there has been a substantial improvement in sponsorship of organasations and events in the fields of the sports, arts, social aid and broadcasting. This improvement has placed sponsorship at the same level of significance than most conventional promotion tools, particularly advertising (Lardinoit and Derbaix, 2001). In 2004, as per the projections, global spending in sponsorship was estimated to reach US $28 billion (from $23.6 billion in 1999 and $2 billion in 1984), of which 69% relates to sporting events (Meenaghan, 2001). Sponsor ship is a business-related activity where one party allows another a chance to utilize an association with a target audience in exchange for funds, resources or services. Sponsorship activities are used by organisations in a various ways to create brand associations, awareness and to penetrate through the clutter of commercial messages (Fill, 2009). Sponsorship can also be defined as † an investment in cash or kind in an activity, in return for access to the exploitable commercial potential associated with that activity. The company promotes its interests and brands by tying them to a specific and meaningful related event or cause† (Rowley and Williams, 2008). Sponsorship investment primarily was perhaps seen as a type of philanthropy; the sponsors may be expecting simply goodwill or nothing as a return (Quattrocchi, 2004; Chadwick and Thwaites, 2005). Considerable amount of sponsorship investments were carried out with no precise explanation or business objective except for helping a favourite sport or event (Davies and Quattrocchi, 2002). As a result in quiet few cases, sponsorship has been talked about as a kind of corporate philanthropy that is the company’s share of profits restored back into community (Polonsky and Speed, 2001). Though, lot of researchers affirmed that corporate philanthropy that used to be ascertained as a pure dedication to the community did look for circumlocutory benefits in corporate image, positive attitude towards the company or social recognition in the community, which similar to desired objectives of business sponsorship nowadays (Martnez et al. 2005). Sponsorship investment has been escalating quickly for many years and sport is the biggest area that has been used by sponsorships (Drewer, 2006). Numerous researchers have been produced to reveal how sponsorship works and how its results could be evaluated hypothetically, but the questions still remain debating (Cornwell et al. 2005). Sport has developed into a professional product or a service over the years. The increasing relevance in professional sport has turned it into a productive business, producing great revenues annually (Mason & Cochetel, 2006). Sport players and games have become commercial possessions offering companies new occasions to communicate and develop their brands (Morgen, 2004). Given the verity that sport sponsorships are usually more profitable compared to art or social cause sponsorships (Walliser, 2003), it can be concluded that sport sponsorship is an instrument of communications that ought to be given serious thought as a business investment. The allocations of limited resources with the purpose of attaining definite organisations’ objectives are important segments of sport sponsorship (Slack and Bentz, 1996). Therefore, it has repeatedly been described as a strategic activity in the marketing literature (Carter, 1996).