PURPOSE This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of corporate social responsibility PR message appeals employed by professional sports teams. METHODS The authors categorized message appeals into self-benefit inclusion and self-benefit exclusion, and evaluated their impact in both public and private evaluation contexts. A 2 (beneficiary message appeal: self-benefit inclusion vs. selfbenefit exclusion) × 2 (message evaluation: public vs private) design model was employed. Data were collected from 165 respondents at a major university in Korea and analyzed using SPSS version 20.0. RESULTS The findings revealed that team loyalty was higher among individuals exposed to self-benefit inclusion messages than those exposed to self-benefit exclusion messages. Additionally, an interaction effect was observed between beneficiary message appeal and message evaluation. Specifically, the self-benefit appeal message was more effective when individuals had lower public self-image concern, while the self-benefit exclusion message was more effective when public self-image concerns were higher. CONCLUSIONS Team loyalty was found to be significantly higher in private evaluation situations for self-benefit inclusion messages, whereas, for self-benefit exclusion messages, the impact of public evaluation situations on team loyalty was greater than in private evaluations.
Many teams in the first division soccer league in Korea are suffering from financial insolvency which has resulted from lack of fan support. Despite the mentioned fact, many teams are still distributing free tickets which results lessoned ticket sales revenue. In order to address the fundamental issue of financial insolvency, it is important to seduce more paid fans to come to stadiums along with increased number of fans. The current study, therefore, examined the perceived value of K-league match ticket prices compared with other competitors such as baseball, basketball, and movie theaters. Data were collected from Gyeongnam F.C.'s home game and out of 164 data collected, 127 were utilized for further analysis. A conjoint analysis was conducted using regression analysis (Luce, 1959) to compare fans' perceived value of ticket prices among different entertainment options. The results displayed that K-league teams should consider increasing ticket prices as it is currently under-priced and, as a result, higher ticket price will drive increase in revenue.
