Conference Season 2012 – A snapshot of presentations
The academic conference season gets underway this week in Australia and New Zealand. Ive included a snapshot of shortened abstracts for accepted presentations for SMAANZ (Sydney) and ANZMAC (Adelaide) over the next week.
1) Testing a Predictive Tool for Season Ticket Holder Renewal
Presented 29th November at SMAANZ 2012
Adam Karg (Deakin University) Heath McDonald & Civilai Leckie (Swinburne University).
The benefits of customer retention to increase profitability are well-established. However, without a reliable indication of likely cases of non-renewal, managers are limited in their ability to develop and implement interventions to avoid customer churn. Empirical, data led approaches can prove difficult to gather given a need for longitudinal tracking studies to effectively assess attitudes and outcomes. Recent research though has provided improved understanding of why consumer switching takes place and greater clarity in identifying important drivers of season ticket holder (STH) churn.
Here, we use intention measures and related behavioural data to examine the effectiveness of the ‘Juster scale’, a purchase probability measure. We conduct this research in the context of teams in major Australian professional sporting leagues, using data collected in consecutive years for different clubs. We find firstly that the Juster scale is an excellent indicator of the sample being within 1% accurate in indicating accuracy of renewal across large samples (for example, a 9/10 renewal score for STH corresponds to 90% (+/- 1%)).
While accurate across a large base, this gives little indication of which of these individuals are at danger of churning, leaving managers with little to guide actions or interventions. As such, individual’s Juster scores, combined with additional variables previously shown to influence churn rates are combined within binary logistic models to predict whether or not individual STH will renew. Once the renewal period has closed, the accuracy of the developed tool was compared to the actual behaviour of each consumer, with between 75%-80% of consumers accurately classified across multiple sports and clubs.
2) Social Media for Sport Teams: Strategy and Evidence of Consumer Segments
Presented 30th November at SMAANZ 2012
Adam Karg (Deakin University), Pat Davis (Swinburne University) and Thomas Gaarenstroom (Deakin University)
Social media is a prominent component of the marketing mix for sport organisations. For professional teams, it delivers a functional ability to communicate directly with fans, share news or content and promote events, sponsors and goods or services. In particular, social networking sites (SNS) such as Twitter and Facebook are dominant components of social media strategy. However, despite wide acceptance, scholarly research is lacking into the management and effectiveness of SNS as marketing tools. Given the significant opportunities SNS present, a greater understanding of how clubs use, and how fans consume SNS can aid the continuing development of wider marketing communications strategy for sport teams.
As such, the aim of this research was two-fold. First, we examined 7 teams SNS activity to determine how teams used SNS over identical periods in two consecutive years. A coding structure was refined and content analysis of club feeds undertaken for all SNS posts over the same two-week period in 2011 and 2012. We found differences in approaches used for Facebook and Twitter and significant development in volume and interactivity within club strategy over a 12 month period. Further, we found club’s activities became more similar or homogeneous in year two of the collection, indicating isomorphism within approaches by social media managers.
Second, we undertook an online consumer survey of SNS users to explore and describe any differences that suggest heterogeneous segments or groups exist within a team’s followers. With the exception of minor differences based on gender and level of fandom, we find little evidence of a need for variant strategies to communicate with a team’s online fan base.
3) A Comparison of Media and Live Dominant Sport Consumers
Presented 4th December at ANZMAC 2012
Adam Karg (Deakin University) Heath McDonald & Civilai Leckie (Swinburne University).
Consumption of sport through TV and internet broadcasts continues to become more attractive to consumers as a result of improved quality of sport broadcasts, ‘live against the gate’ broadcasts and the integration of interactive elements with broadcasting. These developments mean that the decision of whether to consume games live at the stadium, or elsewhere via media broadcasts, is becoming increasingly difficult, even for even highly committed fans, such as season ticket holders (STH).
On the producer side, sport organisations have come to rely heavily on the revenue generated from media broadcasts rights,but are faced with the task of creating and managing products that ensure TV ratings justify the rights spend paid by media companies, while also attracting fans to the stadium. It is clear that in many markets, sport consumers are diverging along consumption lines, with many fans consuming only through mass media. Given this, there is a need to better understand media and live consumers, and how behaviour and attitudes towards products such as season ticket packages may differ.
This study segments and explores STH with variant modes of sport consumption; focussing on identifying differences between large groups of media dominant consumers (n=2400+) who primarily watch games on TV and live dominant consumers, who consume through game attendance (n=1600+). In particular, we investigate the demographics and consumption differences of the two groups and assess how the relationship between satisfaction with club activities and services varies across modes of consumption.
The results showed gender and behavioural differences as well as identifying particular intangible aspects of the STH package such as service and personal involvement that are stronger drivers of satisfaction for media dominant consumers. Such differences suggest that sport teams may need to re-address the design of STH products and services for media dominant consumers.
References and complete abstracts are available upon request.
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