Japanese Journal of Sport Management Vol. 9(2017) No. 1

This article attempts to shed some empirical attention on sport fans' feelings of pride toward multiple sport consumption objects (e.g., team color, logo, home stadium, fight songs, and glory of the past). Data were collected from spectators at professional soccer and baseball games in Japan. The results from Study 1 provided evidence of the scale's construct validity and supported the notion that fans' pride feelings positively influence their identification with the team as well as with the fan community. In Study 2, we found further evidence of construct and nomological validity and concluded that there were two important sequential relationships (1) between fans' feelings of pride toward tangible sport consumption objects (e.g., logo and stadium), team identification, and conative loyalty and (2) between pride feelings toward objects related to communal fan experiences (e.g., logo and fight songs), fan community identification, and conative loyalty.

The purpose of this study was to compare the Pacific League baseball teams in terms of the brand associations that consumers have with team attributes, benefits, and attitudes. This paper assessed the brand attributes using qualitative data with free associations, and benefits and attitudes using quantitative data. An internet survey of local residents living in each of the six teams' hometowns was conducted. A total of 1,967 free associations were obtained from 915 valid samples, and then categorized into 15 groups. Consumer benefits consisted of “Symbolic benefits” and “Experiential benefits.” Consumer attitudes were assessed by “Like and Dislike.” The One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) showed that the “Symbolic benefits” (F (5, 909) = 20.15, p <.001), “Experiential benefits” (F (5, 909) = 9.12, p <.001), and “Attitudes” (F (5, 909) = 7.09, p <.001) were significantly different across teams. The comparison of associations among teams is discussed.