The use of new media to maintain team identification: an examination of interactive fans

Abstract

The sport industry in a multibillion dollar industry, in which sport organizations are consistently looking for ways to maximize revenue generation, as competition for the sport consumer dollar continues to steadily increase. In an effort to maximize revenue across sport organizations, there has been a shift in emphasis from traditionally accepted product-oriented sales to consumer-oriented sales, accentuating the building of long-term relationships with different groups of customers. One consumer segment that warrants extensive attention in the marketing efforts of sport organizations is comprised of interactive fans (iFans), or fans who, regardless of geographic barriers, consume the products of the team through new media outlets. Within this study, consideration was given to iFans, because of their capacity to provide support for teams, through means such as merchandise and media consumption, despite the fact that geographical barriers may impede them from being direct consumers of game day experiences. The newly proposed Interactive Fan Attitude Network (iFan) model was employed to examine the attitude processes of iFans with respect to the consumption of new media in online sport brand communities. Through structural equation modeling, the iFan model was empirically tested to advance the understanding of attitude formation and change in interactive sport settings. The results from the current study point to two major conclusions. First, the results provide evidence that the functional use of new media, measured in terms of what consumers are using new media for, is more appropriate in terms of model fit than the affective use of new media. Second, the team identification attitude is an appropriate mediating variable between new media use and attitude consequences. The study is the first to test the proposed iFan model, and provides practical and theoretical implications.