Marketers are charged with the responsibility of attracting consumers and encouraging loyalty for their brands. Double jeopardy, a marketing law observed across numerous product and service settings, contends that loyalty is largely influenced by a brand's market share. There have been suggestions that sport may be one of the few areas immune to such effects, providing researchers with an opportunity to test how sport brand loyalty may be impacted by market share. The current research capitalises on this opportunity by assessing the effects of market share on attitudinal loyalty reported by a sample of 794 Australian sport fans. ANOVA tests revealed that fans of high market share brands displayed higher levels of attitudinal loyalty towards their favourite teams in comparison to small market share team fans. Further tests revealed that differences existed in terms of the brand association perceptions held by high and small market share team fans, and how these contributed to predicting attitudinal loyalty. Consequently, sport marketers should be cognisant of double jeopardy effects when evaluating sport brands and formulating marketing strategies, though future research is needed to determine the full applicability of double jeopardy within the sport context.
In order to better assess brand performance and to build relationships with consumers, marketers must understand the factors that shape consumer behaviour. Established empirical generalisations, or laws, are based on a phenomenon being observed across a number of contexts and provide marketers with a base to formulate effective marketing strategies (Dawes, 2008 and Hand, 2011). One of these laws, double jeopardy, proposes that small market share brands not only have fewer buyers than their larger competitors, but that the few buyers they do have are also slightly less loyal (Ehrenberg, Goodhardt, & Barwise, 1990). This effect results from small share brands typically having lower levels of distribution and awareness, meaning that their buyers find other brands easier to buy and easier to recall, leading to the observed lower loyalty (Sharp, 2010).
Researchers have theorised that sport may be one of the few areas where double jeopardy does not apply (Gladden and Funk, 2001 and Sharp, 2010), but it is not a context that has been investigated in detail. Sport has been described as a unique consumer setting given the highly emotional relationship that exists between fans and their preferred teams (Shank & Beasley, 1998). From a theoretical perspective this emotional connection may explain why sport might resist double jeopardy effects; however no existing research has yet tested this claim. Therefore, opportunities to extend understandings of the sport consumer exist. This paper acknowledges Chalip's (2006) and Fink's (2012) suggestion that sport management research that contributes most strongly to the theoretical development of the discipline is that which has the sport context at the core of its application. Specifically, we explored potential differences in the brand association perceptions and attitudinal loyalty exhibited by fans of small and high market share teams within a single market. Although not an exhaustive double jeopardy test, the current research offers a starting point to explore the validity of sport brand double jeopardy and provides advancements to sport management theory and practice.
This manuscript is presented in the following format. First, a literature review discussing double jeopardy, loyalty, and brand associations is provided. Second, an overview of the research context is presented where high market share and small market share sport teams are conceptualised. Third, the methods chosen to guide the research are described. Finally, the results, discussion and implications are included along with an acknowledgement of limitations and suggestions for future research.
In summary, this paper has been the first to explore sport brand double jeopardy. Given current results and that double jeopardy has been observed across an array of consumer product and service consumption categories, sport management academics are urged to consider the theory in future research. Future research attempts in the area are encouraged and are likely to contribute to knowledge surrounding the widespread effects of this marketing law. Based on the exploratory results of the current study, future research is positioned to extend knowledge related to sport teams and their consumers by informing sport management academics and brand managers as to the effect of market share on sport fan loyalty. In conclusion, sport brands do not appear immune to the effects of double jeopardy with high market share brand teams evaluated in this study benefiting from increased instances of attitudinal loyalty relative to their small market share brand counterparts.
