Sponsorship-linked marketing: research surpluses and shortages

This systematic review of sponsorship-linked marketing from 1996 to 2017 analyzes the current state of research. The overarching conclusion is that there is a surplus of research that examines audience responses to sponsorship-linked marketing but a shortage of research that examines marketing management of the sponsorship process. This misalignment of research needs to research investments stems partly from a failure to consider the sponsorship process as a whole. Research has failed to account for the complexity of the sponsorship-linked marketing ecosystem that influences both audience response and management decision making. The authors develop a sponsoring process model, generalizable to all sponsorship contexts, as an organizing frame for the review and as a reorienting perspective for research and practice. To spur future work, they advance a series of research questions and, to support practice, provide managerial insights.