Do athletes deserve to have consumers advocating for them?: the effect of athlete brand personality, brand image attributes and brand loyalty on athlete brand advocacy: the mediating effect of deservedness

• Autor(a) principal: Leal, Sara Filipa Pinto
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/24043
• topic: Athlete personality; Self-congruency theories; Athlete brand image attributes; Brand loyalty; Deservedness; Brand advocacy; Personalidade do atleta; Teorias congruentes do eu; Atributos da imagem de marca do atleta; Merecimento; Lealdade à marca; Defesa da marca

In a context where sports are socially driven by the athletic ideal, athletes' deservedness has proven to encourage advocates to fight for their belonged outcomes and rewards. This research is needed for the specific field of sports because it extends deservedness studies into what creates the consumer support system, which may be essential to, afterward, catch other sports entities to also contribute to the athlete brands’ success. Assuming advocates as the main support system, they are seen as a key element able to effect change to the athlete’s worthy rewards. This thesis targets athletes that want to leverage their brand and their brand managers, who should understand the best way to articulate the athletes’ promoted efforts (for social evaluation of deservedness), then develop the support system and encourage brand advocacy. This mindful investigation cares to address a new perspective of deservedness in the relationship athlete - consumer and conclude on what is the relational level most associated to deservedness and worth of social fair distribution of support - brand advocacy. An online questionnaire was conducted towards individuals who had a favorite athlete (N=300) and PLS-SEM was used to test and validate 6 hypotheses. Findings indicate that "athlete brand personality" does not significantly influence "athlete brand advocacy" and the mediating role of deservedness in this relationship is also non-significant; "athlete brand image attributes" and "brand loyalty" significantly strengthen "athlete brand advocacy" and the mediator role of "athlete deservedness" in these relationships is positively significant.