I love you Benfica: an original fan typology based on the analysis of the relationship between S.L. Benfica and it fans

• Autor(a) principal: Lopes, Cristiana Matos
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/15407
• topic: Brand loyalty; Club identity; Sports fans; Willingness to sacrifice; Sport Lisboa e Benfica; Marketing; Clube desportivo; Fã; Identidade coletiva; Fidelidade à Marca; Sacrifício; Portugal

The main objective of this dissertation is to create an original typology of supporters of Sport Lisboa e Benfica. To achieve this, we proposed ourselves to explore the unique relationship that exists between a football club and its supporters, notably between S.L. Benfica and the Benfica fans. The adopted methodology focused on the performance of a qualitative study, using semi-structured interviews with a judicious and nonprobabilistic sample of 42 Benfica fans. The questions aimed at understanding what the fans feel about the club, how they demonstrate it, the sacrifices they are willing to make for S.L. Benfica, the knowledge they have and the interest displayed on various areas of the club, as well as collect their views on some proposals for S.L. Benfica whose objective is to foment and to develop the relationship of the supporters with the club. From the answers obtained, it was verified the existence of several types of supporters who transmit different attitudes, emotions and behaviours towards S.L. Benfica. Through the investigation conducted and based on key theoretical concepts from the literature review and in the analysis of the interviews, we elaborated our classification of fans: the casual, the rational, the highly ingrained and the fanatic in an ascending order of the willingness to sacrifice and of the club identity presented.