Objetivo do estudo: Apesar da existência de oportunidades de desenvolvimento de marcas dos atletas, em esportes menos populares os atletas encontram dificuldades neste tema. Portanto, o presente estudo teve como objetivo contribuir com a literatura existente sobre a marca do atleta, fornecendo uma compreensão melhor e holística da marca do atleta em esportes menos populares.Metodologia: Empregamos a abordagem triádica que envolveu três partes interessadas: Atleta, fãs e mídia, para explorar fatores importantes nas estratégias de marca do atleta em esportes menos populares..Originalidade/Relevância: Há menos foco no esporte menos popular e na marca de seus stakeholders. Com o crescente interesse dos fãs por esportes menos populares e seus atletas estão ganhando mais atenção do que nunca. Assim, o estudo optou por discutir um fenômeno ignorado no contexto da marca do atleta.Principais resultados: Os resultados identificaram quatro temas principais e oito subtemas associados com base nas entrevistas e na análise de conteúdo da mídia. Esses principais e subtemas incluem (1) desempenho (sucesso esportivo, nível de competição), (2) pessoal / privado (características fora do esporte, gerenciamento de imagem), (3) negócios / marketing (promoção de atleta, produtos mercadológicos) e (4) fator contextual (natureza esportiva, proximidade).Contribuições teóricas/metodológicas: o estudo atual contribuiu na literatura existente sobre a marca do atleta por meio do foco em um atleta importante de um esporte menos popular.

© The Author(s) 2019. It is important for brands to appropriately respond when their athlete endorsers are involved in a scandal. The present study examines how consumer evaluations of endorsed brands are influenced by a brand’s response to an endorser scandal. A 2 (brand response strategy type: maintenance vs. termination) × 2 (endorser scandal type: competence-relevant vs. competence-irrelevant) between-subjects experiment is conducted. Specifically, the authors focus on the perceived appropriateness of the response strategy and consumer attitudes toward an endorsed brand. Subjects were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk (N = 111). Consumers perceive that terminating an endorsement contract with a scandalized endorser is more appropriate than maintaining the relationship. This is particularly true when celebrity endorsers are involved in competence-relevant scandals. A further analysis provided support for the idea that perceived “appropriateness” mediates the relationship between competence-relevant scandal and consumer attitude toward an endorsed brand. A termination strategy was considered appropriate when scandalized endorsers engaged in competence-relevant scandals, which eventually lead to more favorable consumer evaluations toward an endorsed brand.

© 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited. Purpose: By testing a moderated mediation model, the purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of credit card self-efficacy in the relationship between credit card literacy and financial well-being. The authors further examine if credit card number moderates this effect. Design/methodology/approach: Data for the study were collected from 427 college students. The PROCESS macros in IBM SPSS Statistics 23 was used to assess the hypothesized relationships. Findings: Credit card literacy positively influences financial well-being through self-efficacy. However, this effect is stronger when college students own fewer credit cards. Practical implications: Banks and credit card issuers, policymakers and colleges and universities should place a greater emphasis on credit card literacy programs that enhance students’ general understanding of credit card terms and conditions and confidence in their ability to effectively use and manage their credit cards. Originality/value: To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the relationship between credit card literacy, self-efficacy and financial well-being.

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Understanding active sport tourists’ profiles and nurturing their destination loyalty are important considerations in the tourism market. Loyal tourists are valuable because they tend to revisit a focal destination and elicit positive word-of-mouth. Focusing on a snow-based active sport tourism context, this study was conducted to examine (1) the usefulness of experience-use history (EUH) as a segmentation tool and (2) the relationship between perceived value factors (i.e. quality, emotional response, monetary price, behavioral price, and destination reputation) and destination loyalty in each EUH group. Data were collected from the Niseko ski resort in Japan (N = 328). Based on the EUH variables (i.e. length and frequency of snow-based sport participation), participants were categorized into four segments (i.e. novice, short-active, long-inactive, and expert). The results showed significant differences among EUH groups in terms of their socio-demographics (e.g. gender, age, and income). A series of regression analyses also showed that each segment’s destination loyalty was uniquely enhanced by perceived value factors. Specifically, perceived quality was a significant antecedent of destination loyalty for sport tourists in the novice group. For those in the short-active, long-inactive, and expert groups, perceived emotional response significantly predicted destination loyalty. Perceived reputation of the destination was also important to enhance destination loyalty for the short-active group whereas perceived monetary price was positively associated with the long-inactive group’s destination loyalty. Marketing managers in snow-based sport tourism destinations can utilize the findings to increase the loyalty of active sport tourists, which will improve their competitiveness in the marketplace.

The current study was conducted to examine the relationship among leisure engagement, affective (i.e. attraction, centrality, resistance to change) and cognitive (i.e. equipment, knowledge) leisure involvement, leisure satisfaction, and subjective happiness. From a sample of 493 American scuba divers, we found that (1) the oft-supported leisure engagement-happiness relationship was rejected, and (2) subjective happiness was directly or indirectly associated with affective and cognitive leisure involvement factors. Specifically, leisure engagement did not show any significant relationship with subjective happiness. Rather, subjective happiness was associated with several affective and cognitive leisure involvement factors. Attraction was associated with subjective happiness through leisure satisfaction, while the relationship between subjective happiness and centrality was negative. Equipment was positively and indirectly associated with subjective happiness whereas knowledge was directly linked to subjective happiness. These demonstrated that affective and cognitive involvement rather than leisure engagement are strongly associated with subjective happiness. Detailed theoretical interpretation and useful information for policy makers who develop leisure programmes aimed at enhancing public happiness will be provided.

© 2017, © Emerald Publishing Limited. Purpose: This study examines the use of high-expertise sources such as doctors to sell dietary supplements and the use of skeptical statements toward approved drugs in the act of selling dietary supplements. Design/methodology/approach: The research questions are addressed by means of a scenario experiment that manipulated two independent variables: expertise (high- vs low-expertise) and skepticism toward prescription drugs (present vs absent). Findings: Surprisingly, skeptical statements from a low-expertise source toward a prescription drug made while selling dietary supplements was found to have an insignificant effect on selling effectiveness (willingness to recommend and perceived product effectiveness). However, when a high-expertise source (doctor) did the same, selling effectiveness was reduced. Research limitations/implications: The paper identifies a boundary condition for competitive selling claims of dietary supplements. Doctors are likely to get away with claims regarding the efficacy of dietary supplements until they criticize a more credible prescription drug in favor of supplements. Practical implications: Claims made by a low-expertise sources and high-expertise sources in the act of selling dietary supplements must be carefully considered. Conventional wisdom tactics may be ineffective. Originality/value: This paper uniquely demonstrates the role of competitive skepticism at different levels of expertise. The findings of this study suggest that managers, in especially the multi-level marketing industry, should reconsider some of their selling tactics.

The purpose of this study was to examine consumers' comparative judgment of athlete endorsers in back-to-back advertisement settings. Drawing on the inclusion/exclusion model (Schwarz & Bless, 2007), the authors argue that (a) a recently observed athlete endorser impacts consumer judgment of subsequently presented endorsers, and (b) the valence of the impact depends on brand category membership of the consecutively presented endorsers. A 2 (representative endorser activation: present vs. absent) x 2 (brand category membership: membership vs. nonmembership) between-subjects design was administered across three experiments. Results demonstrated that the presence of a representative endorser increased a subsequently presented endorser's perceived expertise when that subsequent endorser represented the same brand category. Results also demonstrated that the presence of a representative endorser decreased a subsequently presented endorser's perceived expertise when that subsequent endorser did not represent the same brand category. Overall, these findings support both assimilation and contrast effects. The authors argue how this outcome can assist advertising managers to strategically position appropriate endorsers in marketing platforms.

Research question: The mass media widely broadcasts scandals. However, previous literature lacks examinations of consumer reactions to athlete scandals. Given the detrimental impact, it is important to understand how athletes and brand managers can optimally respond when scandals occur. The purpose of this study is to develop the fundamental understanding of consumer reactions and the effective response strategies in athlete reputational crisis (ARC) settings.Research methods: A three factorial (performance relatednessxintentionalityxinvolvement) experiment was conducted. One hundred ninety-three undergraduate students from a large university located in the southeastern United States participated in the experiment, with analysis based on 180 useful responses.Results and findings: The results indicate that high and low involvement spectators differ in their evaluations of scandalized athletes. The attitude of highly involved consumers is significantly more negative when ARCs are performance related and intentional. Low involvement consumers' attitude displayed a similar pattern, but only when they perceived ARCs as unintentional. Lastly, the results indicate consumers prefer rebuild response strategies (e.g. apology) in all ARC situations. Base strategies (e.g. explaining ARC situations) and sport-specific strategies (e.g. winning to make up) can be used to supplement in performance-related ARC situations.Implications: This study contributes to the fundamental knowledge regarding the potential impact of ARCs. Athlete brand managers can estimate the extent of impact based on ARC characteristics (i.e. performance relatedness and intentionality) and consumer characteristics (i.e. involvement). Furthermore, effective response strategies can be developed by examining the interplay between ARC and consumer characteristics.

    Although there have been numerous reports on decision-making process models attempting to explain various consumer behaviors, no study applying the decision-making process to sports training camps had been undertaken thus far. The purpose of this study was to clarify the decision-making process and to identify the decision-makers in high school and university sports teams. Aiming toward this objective, a semi-structured interview method was adopted. The respondents were from 12 sports teams that visited four cities in Niigata Prefecture. These teams were further broken down into eight university teams, one university club, and three high school teams. As a result, the decision-makers of the sports training camp were divided into two categories : the coach/advisers and the student leader/student in charge of the camp. The decision-making process was carried out by two groups: the groups asking travel agencies for proposals and the groups not asking for the same. Moreover, it was clarified that there were two factors influencing the decision-making process in the sports training camp. The first was the process of arranging and changing reservations in the sports training camp, and the second was the associations needed to be formed in order to reserve accommodations toward securing available sports facilities for the sports teams. Though the common prerequisite for attending the sports training camp was found to be circumstances that were amenable to training, certain differences between the groups were also revealed, and it was clarified that factors such as enthusiasm on the part of the sales person of travel agencies and the flexibility exhibited by the local organizer regarding the sports teams influenced the re-visit behavior. Contemplating these results and exploring the decision-making process carried out in the sports training camp, the decision-making process DAAR [comprising Desire, Association, Action, and Re-visit] was developed in this study.

This study investigated sport excursionists' and sport tourists' revisit models by using the concept of perceived value. Petrick's (2002a) SERV-PERVAL model was employed in order to measure both sport excursionists and tourists' value perceptions. This scale contains five factors, including emotional response, behavioral price, monetary price, quality, and reputation. The findings of this study show that the direct effect of perceived quality on intention to revisit was positive and significant only for sport excursionists. For sport tourists, the global construct of perceived value has the strongest effect on intention to revisit in the expected positive direction. Especially, reputation is the most significant factor that loads primarily on the second-order dimension of perceived value. When tourism managers consider attracting visitors for their revisits, it is important to provide quality experiences specifically for sport excursionists. On the other hand, emphasizing overall perceived value and obtaining splendid destination reputation is important for sport tourists.