Fans’ Perceptions of Professional Tennis Events’ Social Media Presence

This article aims to develop a better understanding of how sport fans perceive events’ social media presence. An online qualitative survey was conducted with sport fans (n = 105) of four professional tennis events (Australian Open, Roland Garros, Wimbledon, and U.S. Open). Findings suggest that fans perceive the events’ usage of social media to be about three aspects: interaction, insight, and brand anthropomorphism. In addition, fan responses suggest that while Facebook is the most popular site for general social media usage, these fans consider Twitter to be their most preferred platform to follow the events. Finally, fan responses illustrate three barriers that brands need to overcome in order to successfully develop and execute their social media strategy: competition with other media, a lack of year-round incentives, and technological capabilities of the platforms, which ultimately influenced fans’ motives and use.

[1]  Galen Clavio,et al.  Social media and the college football audience. , 2011 .

[2]  I. Brace,et al.  Questionnaire Design: How to Plan, Structure and Write Survey Material for Effective Market Research , 2004 .

[3]  Daniel C. Funk,et al.  The Psychological Continuum Model: A Conceptual Framework for Understanding an Individual's Psychological Connection to Sport , 2001 .

[4]  S. Fournier,et al.  The Uninvited Brand , 2010 .

[5]  Jason M. Simmons,et al.  Understanding Professional Athletes' Use of Twitter: A Content Analysis of Athlete Tweets , 2010 .

[6]  Galen Clavio,et al.  Uses and gratifications of a retired female athlete's twitter followers. , 2010 .

[7]  David J. Faulds,et al.  Social media: The new hybrid element of the promotion mix , 2009 .

[8]  Vincent Couvelaere,et al.  Brand Strategy in Professional Sports: The Case of French Soccer Teams , 2005 .

[9]  Christèle Boulaire,et al.  A post modern conception of the product and its applications to professional sports , 2005 .

[10]  Selami Özsoy,et al.  Use of New Media by Turkish Fans in Sport Communication: Facebook and Twitter , 2011, Journal of Human Kinetics.

[11]  Milena M. Parent,et al.  Managing Major Sports Events: Theory and Practice , 2013 .

[12]  Andrew J. Rohm,et al.  A mixed-method approach to examining brand-consumer interactions driven by social media , 2013 .

[13]  F. Pons,et al.  If brand equity matters, where is the brand strategy? A look at Canadian hockey teams in the NHL , 2009 .

[14]  C. End,et al.  An Examination of NFL Fans' Computer Mediated BIRGing , 2001 .

[15]  Andrew J. Martin,et al.  Examining the Development of a Social Media Strategy for a National Sport Organisation A Case Study of Tennis New Zealand , 2014 .

[16]  I. Dey What is qualitative data , 1993 .

[17]  S. J. Chinn,et al.  Meeting Relationship-Marketing Goals Through Social Media: A Conceptual Model for Sport Marketers , 2010 .

[18]  The Utilization of Twitter by Drivers in a Major Racing Series , 2013 .

[19]  P. Pedersen Routledge Handbook of Sport Communication , 2013 .

[20]  M. Sheffer,et al.  An exploratory study of how Twitter is affecting sports journalism. , 2010 .

[21]  Chad Witkemper,et al.  Establishing a Typology of Social Media Uses in the Sport Industry , 2016 .

[22]  Colin Sharp Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods (3rd ed.) , 2003 .

[23]  Patrick Barwise,et al.  The One Thing You Must Get Right When Building a Brand , 2010 .

[24]  P. Aggarwal,et al.  When Brands Seem Human, Do Humans Act Like Brands? Automatic Behavioral Priming Effects of Brand Anthropomorphism , 2012 .

[25]  Ann Pegoraro Sport fandom in the digital world , 2013 .

[26]  J. Bowden The Process of Customer Engagement: A Conceptual Framework , 2009 .

[27]  Andrea N. Geurin,et al.  Alcohol, sponsorship, and new media activation: an investigation of Molson Canadian and the 2014 Olympic Games , 2015 .

[28]  Daniel C. Funk,et al.  Understanding Brand Loyalty in Professional Sport: Examining the Link Between Brand Associations and Brand Loyalty , 2001 .

[29]  #Sponsoring the #FrenchOpen: An Examination of Social Media Buzz and Sentiment , 2015 .

[30]  N. O'Reilly,et al.  Relationship Marketing and Social Media in Sport , 2013 .

[31]  N. O'Reilly,et al.  Social Media Platforms’ Use in Building Stakeholder Relationships: The Case of National Sport Organizations , 2014 .

[32]  George B. Cunningham,et al.  Measuring the Marketing Communication Activations of a Professional Tennis Tournament , 2006 .

[33]  Richard L. Irwin,et al.  Managing North American Major Professional Sport Teams in the New Millennium: A Focus on Building Brand Equity , 2001 .

[34]  Marion E. Hambrick,et al.  'It's incredible – trust me': exploring the role of celebrity athletes as marketers in online social networks , 2011 .

[35]  Patrick T. Coyle,et al.  The Effects of Gender on Perceptions of Team Twitter Feeds , 2013 .

[36]  David R. Thomas,et al.  A General Inductive Approach for Analyzing Qualitative Evaluation Data , 2006 .

[37]  Katherine Bruffy,et al.  Segmentation of a professional sport team's social media community , 2014 .

[38]  Nile M. Khanfar,et al.  The Lasting Effects Of Social Media Trends On Advertising , 2010 .

[39]  Janet S. Fink,et al.  Sport spectator consumption behavior. , 2003 .

[40]  Sylvia von Wallpach,et al.  Multi-method research on consumer–brand associations: Comparing free associations, storytelling, and collages , 2010 .

[41]  B. Weinberg,et al.  Social spending: Managing the social media mix , 2011 .

[42]  E. Kaynak,et al.  An integrative framework linking brand associations and brand loyalty in professional sports , 2008 .

[43]  K. Chapman-Novakofski The open-ended question. , 2011, Journal of nutrition education and behavior.

[44]  Jeffrey W. Kassing,et al.  Fan–Athlete Interaction and Twitter Tweeting Through the Giro: A Case Study , 2010 .

[45]  P. Leeflang,et al.  Popularity of Brand Posts on Brand Fan Pages: An Investigation of the Effects of Social Media Marketing , 2012 .

[46]  Bernard Cova,et al.  Tribal marketing: The tribalisation of society and its impact on the conduct of marketing , 2002 .

[47]  Popi Sotiriadou,et al.  Sport-specific policies and factors that influence international success: The case of tennis , 2015 .

[48]  J. Creswell Qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five traditions. , 1998 .

[49]  E. Kwon,et al.  Follow Me! Global Marketers’ Twitter Use , 2011 .

[50]  John Raacke,et al.  MySpace and Facebook: Applying the Uses and Gratifications Theory to Exploring Friend-Networking Sites , 2008, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[51]  R. Brodie,et al.  Consumer engagement in a virtual brand community: An exploratory analysis , 2013 .

[52]  K. Danylchuk,et al.  How Tweet It Is: A Gendered Analysis of Professional Tennis Players’ Self-Presentation on Twitter , 2012 .

[53]  K. Miloch,et al.  Sporting Facebook: A Content Analysis of NCAA Organizational Sport Pages and Big 12 Conference Athletic Department Pages , 2011 .