Host: The Japan Society for Management Information
This paper demonstrates the effect of imitative excitement aroused by corporate sports teams on a corresponding firm's development of sports products and subsequent performance. In the context of this paper, imitative excitement is a visceral experience felt in response to sports, much like the visceral response to performance in war. In this analysis, we perform a confirmatory factor analysis on 146 data from 19 volleyball teams between 2006 and 2014. Results of the analysis show that corporate team performance is positively related to the corresponding firm's performance via imitative excitement. In addition, a firm's size is positively associated with the number of corporate teams with which the firm is affiliated. This can exert a beneficial effect on profitability through the production of multiple sports-related products.
