Changing negative attitudes through sport sponsorship in Brazil:

a perspective of sport involvement

Resumo

This research assesses whether a sport sponsorship is able to change a negative attitude towards a brand. In this way, investigating the influence and potentialities of sport sponsorships on Brazilians consumers’ attitude and on their consumption intentions. In addition, this paper also evaluates the effect of the sport sponsorship considering the level of sport involvement. An opinion research and a questionnaire were chosen to shape the data collection instrument. The questionnaire was segmented in scenarios, where, at first, negative information about the company was provided in order to create a negative evaluation of a fake brand. Then, the proper independent variable was inserted, being the sport sponsorship implanted through new sets of information (football, projects to the youth and sponsorship of a sport and athletes in an Olympic and Paralympic context). In front of each scenario, the participant was asked to express their attitudes and consumption intention regards the brand. In general, observing a cumulative effect, the findings provide evidence that the sport sponsorship is capable of change a negative attitude towards a brand. The descriptive results, the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test and Spearman correlations supported the ideia that sport sponsorship can have this positive effect, having a similar positive trend in people with high or low sport involvement. However, the Olympic frame presented only a small effect in enhancing the attitude level in all involvement groups. In front of negative scenarios, lasting investments in different platforms of sport sponsorships seem like an effective strategy, affecting positively the purchase intention as well, with similar results regardless the levels of sport involvement, but a slight better performance of a high sport involvement group.