The impact of sport sponsorship on aspects of consumer-based brand equity A case of Formula One World Championship

Over the past three decades the prevalence of sport sponsorship increased tremendously, and its existence became inseparable from every globally recognisable sport category, especially from motor racing. In the current environment of motorsports, the teams participating in automobile racing are heavily depending on sponsorships when it comes to the construction of their budgets. Recently, motorsports have been increasingly popular, attracting a new wave of fans all over the globe that become increasingly invested in racing. Previous research on the topic of sponsorships and motorsports have looked into concepts such as brand attitude, brand recall, brand associations, purchase intentions and related concepts. There has been limited research done that focuses on the multiple-brands aspect related to motorsports, as well as looks into the concepts of fan identification and activity involvement. Due to the increasing popularity of motorsports, those two concepts can bring an interesting perspective concerning the followers of those sports and their responses to sponsoring brands. Additionally, in relation to the consumers and their relationship with the sponsoring brands, an important role is played by what is called by many a consumer-based brand equity, and especially three different aspects of it - brand recall, brand awareness and brand loyalty, as the relationship between sponsorship and these three concepts has been discussed by many scholars in the field. Looking into an environment that not only heavily depends on money from sponsorship, but also attracts many different nationalities could increase the knowledge about effects of sport sponsorship existence on other aspects. Therefore, this research is set to explore the potential relationships between activity involvement, fan identification and three aspects of brand equity - namely brand recall, brand awareness and brand loyalty, and as an example it will use the Formula One World Championship. An online survey was conducted among fans of Formula One to investigate these relationships. Statistical analysis of Chi-Square test of independence, regression analysis and independent t-test were conducted to establish the influence of fan identification and activity involvement on brand recall, brand awareness and brand loyalty. The analysis failed to disprove or approve the existence of a relationship between fan identification, activity involvement and brand recall. However, a significant relationship between activity involvement and brand awareness, as well as fan identification and brand loyalty were found.