Factors leading to customer satisfaction
include, McDonald, Karg and Vocino (2013) as a reference. I will also upload the marking rubric! Please look at that as well for the best quality essay.
3323HSL Sport Marketing
Essay Instructions
Questions Specific essay guidance tutorial and consultation (email and by appointment).
For the Sport Marketing essay, students must choose ONE of the three options (A, B or C) listed below. The purpose of the essay assessment is to gauge students’ ability to apply academic theory to solve real-world issues faced by sport marketers. The three essay topics provide different challenges, so students should select a problem (A, B or C) that matches with their own personal interests. Each option listed below has extensive literature available (on this note, please note the key citations included during the description of each option, below). The topics for the Sport Marketing essay are as follows:
A. Satisfied consumers are loyal consumers. For this option, students must draw on the abundant literature illustrating how different aspects of product or service quality influence customer satisfaction in sport contexts. How does service quality influence customer satisfaction and what recommendations would you provide for sport organisations to enhance satisfaction?
B. Consider the following…. Gold Coast Suns and Brisbane Lions in the AFL, The Gold Coast Titans and Wests Tigers in the NRL, Mainland Tactix and Adelaide Thunderbirds in the ANZ Championship: all teams at the bottom of their respective competitions. Traditionally sport managers have concentrated on recruiting or developing winning teams to attract consumers (BIRGing or vicarious achievement). However, salary caps lead to variable team performances from one season to the next. How can sport organisations increase consumption in the face of off-field failures?
C. Loyal consumers are imperative to sport organisations as they repeat purchase. Using the Psychological Continuum Model, review factors that lead to the strengthening of consumers’ attitudes at different stages (Awareness, Attraction, Attachment and Allegiance). How can marketers leverage increases in loyalty at different levels of the model?
Option A – Factors leading to customer satisfaction
Satisfied customers are loyal customers! Recently, McDonald, Karg and Vocino (2013) published an article looking at factors leading to the satisfaction of season-ticket holders in the Australian Football League (AFL). This article extended on Madrigal’s (1995) seminal work on fan satisfaction in relation to event attendance (Madrigal’s article has been cited 456 times at the time of writing!). In Option A, students are required to explore factors (i.e., service-quality) that lead to customer satisfaction and, then, consider how sport organisations may design, update or improve products and services to achieve customer satisfaction. This discussion should culminate in students providing grounded recommendations (based off relevant theory) for sport organisations to enhance customer satisfaction.
Introduction
In the introduction, set out the landscape of research on customer satisfaction and, then, articulate the major topics covered in the essay, succinctly.
Main body
Following the definition and introduction to the essay, students should explain what influences satisfaction. This will lead students to discuss specific factors, which lead to satisfaction. Students should clearly articulate why the specific factors have an influence on satisfaction and what sport organisations gain from satisfying their customers. From this point, students should develop recommendations for sport
organisations to increase customer satisfaction, based on the theory reviewed during the main body of the paper.
Conclusions
Briefly summarise the key content and arguments discussed in your essay
Option B – The influence of team success on consumer retention
You only sing when you are winning! Since Cialdini et al. (1976) published their seminal work on Basking in Reflected Glory (BIRG), team success has dominated thinking related to the attraction and retention of consumers. Drawing on Cialdini et al. (1976) consider how consumers respond to good and bad. The original BIRGing hypothesis stated that consumers seek to add proximity between their self and successful teams, while distancing their self from unsuccessful teams (Cutting Off Reflected Failure (CORF)). If this thinking on consumer psychology holds, marketers of unsuccessful teams’ face an impossible challenge – but this is not always the case (See the Toronto Blue Jays as an example). In this option, students should consider the implications of success and failure for sport organisations and design marketing strategies to retain fans during periods of team failure.
Introduction
Students should briefly outline BIRGing and CORFing and, then, introduce the major topics covered during the essay, succinctly.
Main body
After the introduction, students should clearly articulate the effect of winning and losing on consumer behaviour. In doing so, students should develop an argument to outline why fans stop supporting losing teams and, then, why fans continue to support losing teams. This will provide students with a basis to develop grounded recommendations for sport marketers to operate in environments with and without team success, based on the theory reviewed during the main body.
Conclusions
Briefly summarise the key content and arguments discussed in your essay.
Option C: Increasing consumer loyalty
Please come back! Funk and James (2001) developed the Psychological Continuum Model (PCM) as a tool to understand how sport consumers attitudes toward teams and activities strengthen through four stages of involvement (Awareness, Attraction, Attachment and Allegiance). In this option, students are required to introduce the PCM (and other literature published using the model – some 450 articles are available at the time of writing) and, then, present recommendations on how sport organisations can increase consumer loyalty at different stages of the model. Here students should decide if sport organisations would be better served developing marketing initiatives homogeneously for all consumers or approaches that use varying approaches to target consumers at different stages of psychological connection.
Introduction
Students should briefly outline what consumer loyalty is and, then, define the major topics covered in the essay.
Main body
Students should discuss how fan loyalty increases as people move vertically through the PCM. This discussion should focus on how loyalty increases at each stage, and the factors that lead to increases in
loyalty (i.e., processes). After outlining the processes that lead to consumer relationships strengthening (and thus, loyalty), students should articulate grounded recommendations for sport organisations to increase the loyalty of consumers through moving them up the stages of the PCM.
Conclusions
Briefly summarise the key content and arguments discussed in your essay.
Tips for the literature search
Each option presented above includes some seminal articles that students should consult. In addition to the seminal articles mentioned, use the ‘cited by’ and ‘related articles’ links within Google Scholar to locate additional articles that cover the topic chosen. While the example, below, concerns Option B, the same process applies for Options A-C.
Referencing information for all essay options
Students must use a minimum of six peer-reviewed academic journal articles. The reference list does not count towards the 2000 page word limit for the essay assessment.
All students are required to use six peer-reviewed journal articles (i.e., published in a scholarly source). Students may also use reputable web sources (e.g., Forbes) or newspaper articles (e.g., The Australian) to contextualise key points – in addition to the minimum of six academic sources. Students should attempt to use peer-reviewed journal articles primarily and other sources as a way to provide context.
A reference list provides an indication of the amount of effort invested in the chosen topic. While students may use resources provided in class and on Learning@Griffith, all students should use a broad array of resources to support key arguments. Students should record all in-text citations in a reference list, which must conform to APA style guidelines. Guidance on APA referencing is available via the Library website and in the GBS resource bank section of the 3323HSL Learning@Griffith site.
MAKE REFERENCING EASIER The Griffith Library and Google Scholar both provide students with functionality to make building reference lists easier. For the Griffith Library, please visit the following URL: http://www.griffith.edu.au/library/workshops-training/self-help-resources/referencing for information on the University referencing tool. In Google Scholar, follow the steps shown below.
Then….
Appendices
Appendices do not count toward the word limit. However, students should avoid excessive use of appendices. Only include additional appendices if you believe they will further the readers’ understanding of material that is already included in your essay. Students should refer to any appendicised materials in the body of your essay i.e., (See Appendix A).