Brand creation and management has attracted significant attention in academic circles in the past five decades, with several, often contradicting views being expressed. The idea of a rigid, company-controlled brand (Fulmer, 1965; Lear, 1963) has been gradually replaced by the notion of a more flexible and consumer-focused brand personality (Aaker, 1997; Schade, Piehler, & Burmann, 2014), which has in turn been overtaken by the concept of a rather multi-stakeholder co-creation of brands (Pongsakornrungsilp & Schroeder, 2011; Zhang, Jiang, Shabbir, & Du, 2015). This co-creation suggests that the brand is shaped through the interactions between the brand owner/manager and its various stakeholders, which can trigger significant strategic managerial implications. However, while aspects such as brand consistency, or inconsistency among different stakeholders, stakeholder overlap, traditional and digital medial proliferation and power shift from the organisation to the stakeholders have been studied extensively (Harris & de Chernatony, 2001; Kenyon, Manoli, & Bodet, 2018; Manoli & Hodgkinson, 2019), the practical facets of these strategic managerial implications are in need of further exploration. It is these strategic implications and their unexplored practical aspects that this special issue aims to focus on, while centring on the vibrant and rapidly developing sector of sport.
Sport, one of the most rapidly and steadily growing sectors world-wide, has attracted equally significant attention in the past three decades by academia and practice alike, as a previous special issue in this journal illustrated (see Manoli, 2018). As a result, sport brands, their uniqueness and management have also captured substantial interest, not only as an area worthy of academic exploration, but also as a means for other brands to explore and develop through it (Bauer, Sauer, & Schmitt, 2005; Henseler, Wilson, & Westberg, 2011; Richelieu, 2016), making sport brand management take two forms; brand management in sport and brand management through sport. This special issue aims to add to the ever-developing branding and sport branding literature, by exploring both forms that sport brand management can take, while taking into consideration its strategic nature and the rapid development of the sport sector and the wider social, technological and economic environment.
Subject Coverage
Potential authors are invited to submit papers related but not restricted to the following topics:
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- Brand management in sport
- Brand development and activation in/through sports
- Sport sponsorship and brands
- Ambush marketing in sport and repercussions for brands
- Athlete endorsement, activation and measurement
- Brand management in sport and social media
- Customer/fan brand loyalty applications and management
- Alternative brand management in/trough sport
- Integrated Marketing Communications in sports
- Ethical issues in brand management in/through sport
- Brand management and corruption in sport
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Research papers, viewpoints, technical papers, conceptual papers, case studies, literature reviews and general reviews are welcome.
References
Aaker, J. L. (1997). Dimensions of Brand Personality. Journal of Marketing Research, 34(3), 347. https://doi.org/10.2307/3151897
Bauer, H. H., Sauer, N. E., & Schmitt, P. (2005). Customer‐based brand equity in the team sport industry. European Journal of Marketing, 39(5/6), 496–513. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090560510590683
Fulmer, R. M. (1965). Product Management: Panacea or Pandora’s Box? California Management Review, 7(4), 63–74. https://doi.org/10.2307/41165648
Harris, F., & de Chernatony, L. (2001). Corporate branding and corporate brand performance. European Journal of Marketing, 35(3/4), 441–456. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090560110382101
Henseler, J., Wilson, B., & Westberg, K. (2011). Managers’ Perceptions of the Impact of Sport Sponsorship on Brand Equity: Which Aspects of the Sponsorship Matter Most? Sport Marketing Quarterly, 20(1), 7–21.
Kenyon, J. A., Manoli, A. E., & Bodet, G. (2018). Brand consistency and coherency at the London 2012 Olympic Games. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 26(1), 6–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/0965254X.2017.1293139
Lear, R. W. (1963). No Easy Road to Market Orientation. Harvard Business Review, 41(5), 53–60.
Manoli, A. E. (2018). Sport marketing’s past, present and future; an introduction to the special issue on contemporary issues in sports marketing. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 26(1), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1080/0965254X.2018.1389492
Manoli, A. E., & Hodgkinson, I. R. (2019). The implementation of integrated marketing communication (IMC): evidence from professional football clubs in England. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/0965254X.2019.1593225
Pongsakornrungsilp, S., & Schroeder, J. E. (2011). Understanding value co-creation in a co-consuming brand community. Marketing Theory, 11(3), 303–324. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470593111408178
Richelieu, A. (2016). Sport teams’ brands going international: The ‘Integrated Marketing Strategy on the Internationalisation in Sport’ (IMSIS). Journal of Brand Strategy, 5(2), 218–231.
Schade, M., Piehler, R., & Burmann, C. (2014). Sport club brand personality scale (SCBPS): A new brand personality scale for sport clubs. Journal of Brand Management, 21(7–8), 650–663. https://doi.org/10.1057/bm.2014.36
Zhang, J., Jiang, Y., Shabbir, R., & Du, M. (2015). Building industrial brand equity by leveraging firm capabilities and co-creating value with customers. Industrial Marketing Management, 51, 47–58. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.INDMARMAN.2015.05.016
Submission instructions
All papers should be submitted through the Journal’s submission process, i.e. ScholarOne Manuscript Central online submission system. For details on how to submit using Manuscript Central, please, see the (JSM) author guidelines.
Important Dates
- Deadline for papers submission: September 30th, 2020
- Publication: in 2021
Submission Instructions
When submitting your manuscript, you will be asked to specify whether the manuscript is for a normal issue of the Journal of Strategic Marketing or for this special issue. Please, make sure that you select the Strategic Brand Management In and Through Sport special issue option. Papers must not have been published, accepted for publication, or presently be under consideration for publication elsewhere. A standard double-blind review process will be used to select papers for the special issue.
For any queries, please, contact the guest editor, Elisavet Argyro Manoli, School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, Loughborough University, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU, UK, e.a.manoli@lboro.ac.uk
