The British Olympic football team : a quasi-experimental assessment of support for a new sport team among Scottish and English football fans
Purpose The decision by the British Olympic Association to enter a soccer team into the Olympic Games of 2012, having not participated in the Olympic soccer competition since 1960, provided an opportunity to study representation as a predictor of fan identification. The paper aims to discuss this i...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
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Emerald
2018
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| Subjects: |
| _version_ | 1825624983803527168 |
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| author | Hills, Stephen Heere, Bob Walker, Matthew |
| author_facet | Hills, Stephen Heere, Bob Walker, Matthew |
| author_sort | Hills, Stephen |
| collection | LMU |
| description | Purpose
The decision by the British Olympic Association to enter a soccer team into the Olympic Games of 2012, having not participated in the Olympic soccer competition since 1960, provided an opportunity to study representation as a predictor of fan identification. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a quasi-experimental research design, the authors empirically validated the value of representation by comparing the identity levels of homogeneous samples of English and Scottish respondents toward the Great Britain Olympic National Football, participating in the Olympic Games of 2012.
Findings
Only partial support for four sets of hypotheses was found. In general, there seemed to be low levels of identity of each of the samples with the football team, because neither English nor Scottish respondents perceived the team to be representative of them. Nevertheless, the results support the general notion that representation is a valuable predictor of consumer identification.
Originality/value
Representation has been proposed as a central component of a sport team’s ability to serve as a symbol to their community, which enables the team to benefit from existing fan identities and the community the team is associated with. Yet, an empirical assessment of this phenomenon is lacking. |
| first_indexed | 2024-07-09T03:51:00Z |
| format | Article |
| id | oai:repository.londonmet.ac.uk:2592 |
| institution | London Metropolitan University |
| last_indexed | 2024-07-09T03:51:00Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| publisher | Emerald |
| record_format | eprints |
| spelling | oai:repository.londonmet.ac.uk:25922019-12-02T11:39:45Z https://repository.londonmet.ac.uk/2592/ The British Olympic football team : a quasi-experimental assessment of support for a new sport team among Scottish and English football fans Hills, Stephen Heere, Bob Walker, Matthew 790 Recreational & performing arts Purpose The decision by the British Olympic Association to enter a soccer team into the Olympic Games of 2012, having not participated in the Olympic soccer competition since 1960, provided an opportunity to study representation as a predictor of fan identification. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach Using a quasi-experimental research design, the authors empirically validated the value of representation by comparing the identity levels of homogeneous samples of English and Scottish respondents toward the Great Britain Olympic National Football, participating in the Olympic Games of 2012. Findings Only partial support for four sets of hypotheses was found. In general, there seemed to be low levels of identity of each of the samples with the football team, because neither English nor Scottish respondents perceived the team to be representative of them. Nevertheless, the results support the general notion that representation is a valuable predictor of consumer identification. Originality/value Representation has been proposed as a central component of a sport team’s ability to serve as a symbol to their community, which enables the team to benefit from existing fan identities and the community the team is associated with. Yet, an empirical assessment of this phenomenon is lacking. Emerald 2018-08-06 Article PeerReviewed Hills, Stephen, Heere, Bob and Walker, Matthew (2018) The British Olympic football team : a quasi-experimental assessment of support for a new sport team among Scottish and English football fans. International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship, 19 (3). pp. 276-289. ISSN 1464-6668 10.1108/ijsms-05-2016-0017 10.1108/ijsms-05-2016-0017 |
| spellingShingle | 790 Recreational & performing arts Hills, Stephen Heere, Bob Walker, Matthew The British Olympic football team : a quasi-experimental assessment of support for a new sport team among Scottish and English football fans |
| title | The British Olympic football team : a quasi-experimental assessment of support for a new sport team among Scottish and English football fans |
| title_full | The British Olympic football team : a quasi-experimental assessment of support for a new sport team among Scottish and English football fans |
| title_fullStr | The British Olympic football team : a quasi-experimental assessment of support for a new sport team among Scottish and English football fans |
| title_full_unstemmed | The British Olympic football team : a quasi-experimental assessment of support for a new sport team among Scottish and English football fans |
| title_short | The British Olympic football team : a quasi-experimental assessment of support for a new sport team among Scottish and English football fans |
| title_sort | british olympic football team a quasi experimental assessment of support for a new sport team among scottish and english football fans |
| topic | 790 Recreational & performing arts |
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