Conceptualizing Ambush Marketing: Developing a Typology of Ambush Strategy and Exploring the Managerial Implications for Sport Sponsors

Abstract

As sport sponsorship has grown in importance and sophistication over the past three decades, so too have the efforts made by un-associated brands to capitalize on the financial benefits and media value provided by sport. By offering would-be sponsors an alternative means of associating with an event without the substantial expense of securing an official partnership, ambush marketing has become a major threat to the investments made by official sponsors, cluttering the marketing environment surrounding sponsorship and challenging sponsors for consumer attention and awareness. Unfortunately, our understanding of ambushing and its impact on the management of sponsorship programmes has been limited by the predominantly a theoretical, outdated perspective of ambush marketing espoused by commercial rights holders and event organizers.

This study presents a conceptual examination of ambush marketing, providing a theoretical investigation of the nature, role, strategy and impact of ambush marketing and a renewed perspective of ambush marketing as a form of marketing
communications. Contemporary ambush marketing represents a strategic alternative to official sponsorship, which offers a brand access to consumer attention and awareness by creating an affiliation, whether implicit or explicit, with an event or property. This previously unexplored complexity and diversity has informed the construction and development of a typology of ambush strategy which contemporizes past ambush marketing research and affords new insight into the role and evolution of ambush
marketing, and its impact on sport sponsorship management. The development of a theoretical conceptualization of ambush marketing represents an integral step in the advancement of the academic study of ambushing, and affords the opportunity to better understand the impact of ambushing on sponsorship and to further explore the nature of ambush marketing.

Date of Award	2012
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Coventry University
Supervisor	Simon Chadwick (Supervisor)