Measurement of Soccer Brands in Social Media

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2013 im Fachbereich Gesundheit - Sport - Sportökonomie, Sportmanagement, Note: 1,7, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster (Marketingcenter), Veranstaltung: Roland Berger Praxisseminar, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: In the course of the rising importance of the economic competitive position of professional soccer clubs and as a consequence thereof the spreading of entrepreneurial structures makes the buildup and management of professional team brands inevitable. A professional and customer-oriented brand management is essential for the long-term success of a brand. "While (athletic) success may be fleeting, a focus on commitment to customers is not". The brand facilitates economic success independently of athletic success. In just a few years, social media, especially social networking sites, have become extremely popular: As of January 2009, Facebook registered more than 175 million active users that is over twice the population of Germany and the average amount of time spent on social networks increased by 82%. Companies have never had such an opportunity to interact with millions of customers at relatively low prices. Thus it is inevitable for professional soccer teams to build strong brands in the social media environment. Social media employs mobile and web-based technologies to construct highly interactive platforms through which individuals and communities share, co-create, and discuss user-generated content. With this rise in social media the power has been shifted from firms towards the individuals that create, share, and consume Facebook entries, blogs, etc. Communication about brands occurs, with or without the permission of firms, which is another reason to join the discussions actively. This paper addresses the problem of how professional soccer teams can build strong brands, first offline and then specified for brand fan pages of social networking sites and how they can measure the success of their brand building actions. The flow of this paper is as follows: first, Keller's model of customer-based brand equity is presented. That initial section is followed by adapting Keller's approach to soccer brands and the paper concludes with a specification of that approach for soccer brands in the social media environment.