Sport team loyalty: integrating relationship marketing and a hierarchy of effects

Purpose – Given its importance in the brand management of sport teams, the present research initiative primarily concerns the investigation of the formation process of sport team loyalty. By integrating a hierarchy of effects model into a relational perspective, the study aims to investigate the role of sport consumers' involvement, self-expression, trust and attachment with a sport team in building loyal relationships. A conceptual model is proposed and tested in the context of professional soccer teams. Design/methodology/approach – The data of the study comes from 287 consumers of a South East European country. The fit of the model is tested using structural equation modeling and the statistical program LISREL. Findings – The results confirm that: all the hypothesized constructs constitute either direct or indirect determinants of sport team loyalty; a hierarchy of effects approach, cognition-affect-conation, can explain how strong consumers-team relationships can be developed; and team attachment acts as a partial mediator in the relationship between the cognitive components of the model (team involvement, trust and self-expression) and team loyalty. Practical implications – The findings provide several implications to marketing managers of sport teams in how to go about and develop loyal sport fans. Originality/value – No previous investigation has integrated relationship marketing with a hierarchy of effects in order to explain loyalty to a sport team.