IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jbecon/v87y2017i7d10.1007_s11573-017-0859-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are sponsors blamed for edging off? Consumer reactions to sponsorship terminations

Author

Listed:
  • Oliver Schnittka

    (University of Southern Denmark (Esbjerg))

  • Alexander Himme

    (Kühne Logistics University)

  • Dominik Papies

    (Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen)

  • David Pellenwessel

    (University of Hamburg)

Abstract

Firms regularly terminate sponsorships, even without publicly known misconduct by the sponsee such as athlete doping. Consumer reactions to these sponsorship terminations by firms have not been studied despite being a regular occurrence. Using a set of experimental studies, this paper analyzes consumer reactions to these sponsorship terminations (i.e., early and non-renewal) that were not caused by a sponsee’s misconduct, the underlying process that causes the reactions, and the role of several moderating factors (trust, power balance, and locus of control). Our findings reveal that sponsorship terminations have a negative effect on sponsors’ brand images—particularly early terminations that occur before the end of a contract—because consumers perceive these sponsorship terminations as unfair. The results also suggest that a termination is particularly harmful for the sponsor’s perceived fairness if the sponsor is powerful and if the termination decision is under the sponsor’s control. Further, the termination effect is particularly strong for firms that consumers trust.

Suggested Citation

  • Oliver Schnittka & Alexander Himme & Dominik Papies & David Pellenwessel, 2017. "Are sponsors blamed for edging off? Consumer reactions to sponsorship terminations," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 87(7), pages 943-984, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jbecon:v:87:y:2017:i:7:d:10.1007_s11573-017-0859-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s11573-017-0859-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11573-017-0859-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11573-017-0859-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michelle L. Roehm & Michael K. Brady, 2007. "Consumer Responses to Performance Failures by High-Equity Brands," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 34(4), pages 537-545, July.
    2. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard H, 1986. "Fairness and the Assumptions of Economics," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(4), pages 285-300, October.
    3. Cornwell, T. Bettina & Coote, Leonard V., 2005. "Corporate sponsorship of a cause: the role of identification in purchase intent," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 268-276, March.
    4. Bolton, Lisa E & Warlop, Luk & Alba, Joseph W, 2003. "Consumer Perceptions of Price (Un)Fairness," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 29(4), pages 474-491, March.
    5. Maurice Schweitzer & Donald Gibson, 2008. "Fairness, Feelings, and Ethical Decision- Making: Consequences of Violating Community Standards of Fairness," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 77(3), pages 287-301, February.
    6. Folkes, Valerie S, 1984. "Consumer Reactions to Product Failure: An Attributional Approach," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 10(4), pages 398-409, March.
    7. Folkes, Valerie S, 1988. "Recent Attribution Research in Consumer Behavior: A Review and New Directions," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 14(4), pages 548-565, March.
    8. Xinshu Zhao & John G. Lynch & Qimei Chen, 2010. "Reconsidering Baron and Kenny: Myths and Truths about Mediation Analysis," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 37(2), pages 197-206, August.
    9. Shimp, Terence A & Hyatt, Eva M & Snyder, David J, 1991. "A Critical Appraisal of Demand Artifacts in Consumer Research," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 18(3), pages 273-283, December.
    10. Paul A. Pavlou & David Gefen, 2005. "Psychological Contract Violation in Online Marketplaces: Antecedents, Consequences, and Moderating Role," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 16(4), pages 372-399, December.
    11. Goldberg, Marvin E & Hartwick, Jon, 1990. "The Effects of Advertiser Reputation and Extremity of Advertising Claim on Advertising Effectiveness," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 17(2), pages 172-179, September.
    12. Mazodier, Marc & Quester, Pascale, 2014. "The role of sponsorship fit for changing brand affect: A latent growth modeling approach," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 16-29.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alba, George & Slongo, Luiz Antonio, 2020. "Getting a no-reply is also a reply: An investigation of unreplied consumer attributions," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    2. Pillai, Kishore Gopalakrishna & Kumar, V., 2012. "Differential Effects of Value Consciousness and Coupon Proneness on Consumers’ Persuasion Knowledge of Pricing Tactics," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 88(1), pages 20-33.
    3. Vaidyanathan, Rajiv & Aggarwal, Praveen, 2003. "Who is the fairest of them all? An attributional approach to price fairness perceptions," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 56(6), pages 453-463, June.
    4. Lu, Zhi & Bolton, Lisa E. & Ng, Sharon & Chen, Haipeng (Allan), 2020. "The Price of Power: How Firm’s Market Power Affects Perceived Fairness of Price Increases," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 220-234.
    5. Homburg, Christian & Lauer, Karin & Vomberg, Arnd, 2019. "The multichannel pricing dilemma: Do consumers accept higher offline than online prices?," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 597-612.
    6. Emre Yildirim & Tuğba Koç & Yakup Güzel, 2024. "Excessive Pricing at the Covid-19 Pandemic: Big Data Insights From Consumer Complaints," SAGE Open, , vol. 14(1), pages 21582440241, January.
    7. Wamsler, Julia & Natter, Martin & Algesheimer, René, 2022. "Transitioning to dynamic prices: Should pricing authority remain with the company or be delegated to the service employees instead?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 1476-1488.
    8. Dutta, Sujay & Yaprak, Attila & Grewal, Dhruv, 2017. "Fairness perceptions of retail price increases by foreign and domestic brands: The roles of ethnocentric beliefs, profit stickiness, and contextual information," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 37-45.
    9. Tuzovic, Sven & Simpson, Merlin C. & Kuppelwieser, Volker G. & Finsterwalder, Jörg, 2014. "From ‘free’ to fee: Acceptability of airline ancillary fees and the effects on customer behavior," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 98-107.
    10. Sriram Venkiteswaran & Rangaraja P. Sundarraj, 2021. "How Angry are You? Anger Intensity, Demand and Subjective Value in Multi-round Distributive Electronic Negotiation," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 30(1), pages 143-170, February.
    11. Jessica Mikeska & Elise Johansen Harvey, 2015. "The Political CEO: An Event Study Comparing Consumer Attributions of CEO Behavior," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 96(1), pages 76-92, March.
    12. Joëlle Vanhamme & Adam Lindgreen & Jon Reast & Nathalie Popering, 2012. "To Do Well by Doing Good: Improving Corporate Image Through Cause-Related Marketing," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 109(3), pages 259-274, September.
    13. Kanupriya Katyal & Vinay Kanetkar & Sanjay Patro, 2019. "What is a fair fare? Exploring the differences between perceived price fairness and perceived price unfairness," Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 18(2), pages 133-146, April.
    14. Sezer Ülkü & Chris Hydock & Shiliang Cui, 2022. "Social Queues (Cues): Impact of Others’ Waiting in Line on One’s Service Time," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(11), pages 7958-7976, November.
    15. Snir, Avichai & Levy, Daniel & Levy, Dudi & Chen, Haipeng (Allan), 2025. "Price Gouging or Market Forces? Fairness Perceptions of Price Hikes during the Pandemic," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 0.
    16. Schaefers, Tobias & Leban, Marina & Vogt, Florian, 2022. "On-demand features: Consumer reactions to tangibility and pricing structure," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 751-761.
    17. Eric T. Anderson & Duncan I. Simester, 2008. "—Does Demand Fall When Customers Perceive That Prices Are Unfair? The Case of Premium Pricing for Large Sizes," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(3), pages 492-500, 05-06.
    18. Niek Hensen & Debbie I. Keeling & Ko Ruyter & Martin Wetzels & Ad Jong, 2016. "Making SENS: exploring the antecedents and impact of store environmental stewardship climate," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 44(4), pages 497-515, July.
    19. repec:dau:papers:123456789/5853 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Kathleen Cleeren & Marnik G. Dekimpe & Harald J. Heerde, 2017. "Marketing research on product-harm crises: a review, managerial implications, and an agenda for future research," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 45(5), pages 593-615, September.
    21. Melis, Giuseppe & Piga, Claudio A, 2016. "Are all online hotel prices created dynamic? An empirical assessment," MPRA Paper 75896, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • M30 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - General
    • M31 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Marketing
    • M39 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Other

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:jbecon:v:87:y:2017:i:7:d:10.1007_s11573-017-0859-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.