Abstract
Professional baseball has had national popularity, but nowadays, the team business is at the crossroads. The professional baseball teams have played a strong role of an advertising tower for the parent company so far. However, due to depression in recent years, the teams are in a difficult position to depend on the parent company and to continue loss-making operation. Therefore, they are increasingly pressed for independence. Under such a situation, the professional baseball community should utilize marketing and promotion more effectively to lessen the distance between the professional baseball teams and their fans. It is important to grasp the needs of the fans regarded as customers. In this research, based on the conventional research of service quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty, we conducted a survey study on loyalty and satisfaction to the professional baseball teams. Particularly, in order to grasp the fans' attitudes and needs, a web-questionnaire survey from the fans who support a specific professional baseball team was conducted. On the basis of factor analysis, covariance structure analysis and text mining, we examined how and which factors have an effect on the loyalty and satisfaction to the teams and what the fans desire to the teams.
