The Effect of Athlete Brand Personality on Athlete Attachment and Brand Supportive Behavior

Abstract

Identifying what factors of athlete brand personality affect consumers level of attachment to the athlete and brand supportive behavior is the most pressing issues as they are perceived to have a strong connection with consumers. Up-to-date, researches have been carried out emphasizing and conceptualizing athletes when promoting matches. Yet, few studies have investigated in terms of variables that affect level of consumers attachment to the individual athlete, and brand supportive behavior. This article commenced with a primary object to identify the effect of athlete brand personality on athlete attachment and brand supportive behavior since the influence of athlete is getting bigger and bigger among the consumers as sport industry developed as time passes

and to offer valuable insights to sport academia and marketing practice to further retain customers and expand profits.

This study conducted an online survey obtaining 269 valid surveys. The study carried out data analysis for descriptive, confirmatory analysis, reliability analysis and structural equation modeling to examine the data. Thereafter, the valuable outcomes from this research clearly determined that which factors of athlete brand personality have a significant effect on athlete attachment and brand supportive behavior. The result of the analysis is as follow.

This examination proves that athlete brand personality: Charming, wholesome and imaginative have a positive direct/indirect effect on brand supportive behavior. On the flip side, the rest of athlete brand personality of tough has a no significant direct/indirect effect on brand supportive behavior, and even successful has a negative direct/indirect effect on brand supportive behavior.

In this regard, sport managers can utilize the information derived from this research to better understand the significance of specific traits of athlete brand personality influencing athlete attachment and brand supportive behavior. This in turn, will help sport marketers not only to make athlete stand out from the customers, but also expand profits from the products sponsored by the athlete.