Consumers’ response to ambush marketing activities

Owing to the high sponsorship fees and category exclusivity of sponsorship rights in the major events, ambush marketing activities are increasingly planned and practiced in order to capitalize on the benefits associated with the event. As a result, the integrity of the sponsorship‘s rights is broken and the sponsor‘s investment is undermined, which has the potential to threaten the financial viability of the events. In order to maintain event integrity and protect official sponsors from attack by ambushers, the International Olympic Committee introduced a "Name and Shame" campaign to create public awareness of companies‘ ambushing efforts. This study aims to explore consumers‘ response to ambush marketing disclosure by using a survey questionnaire approach. Balance theory and attribution theory are incorporated into an integrated model illustrating how the factors, including the event-related factor (event involvement), the sponsor-related factor (consumer attitude towards the sponsor), the ambusher-related factor (prior brand knowledge and perceived corporate social responsibility), and consumers‘ perceived motives for sponsorship and ambush marketing, have an impact on the degree of blame consumers place on ambushing attempts and thus their attitudes towards ambushing companies. Eight hundred questionnaires were collected in the UK and structural equation modelling was adopted to analyse the data. The model was tested respectively under two different types of ambushing contexts, that is, predatory ambushing (n=400) and associative ambushing (n=400). In both contexts, the results shows that event involvement and consumer attitude towards the sponsor have a positive influence on consumer blame, while prior brand knowledge of the ambusher are negatively related to consumer blame. However, consumers‘ perceived CSR of the ambusher can negatively influence consumer blame only in an associative ambushing context, but not in a predatory ambushing context. In addition, consumers‘ perceived motives are confirmed to play a critical role in affecting consumers‘ response to a company‘s ambushing practice.