Brand equity and college athletics: Investigating the effects of brand uncertainty situations on consumer-based brand equity

Brand equity is a much discussed topic in the marketing literature and in a variety of fields, including sport management. As sport organizations face stronger competition for consumers' entertainment dollars, brand equity has become a more relevant topic. Using brand equity research from both the marketing and sport management literature as a basis, this study attempts to measure the effects of brand uncertainty situations (e.g., times when a consumer must think about how they feel about a specific brand) on the brand equity that consumers hold for a Division I college football team. This study also advances the understanding of what situations can "activate" brand equity in the minds of consumers and the impact of such activation on consumers' decision-making. The purpose of this study was to determine if individuals with strong brand equity respond differently than those with weak brand equity to a specific brand uncertainty situation. Students (N = 141) from the university under investigation participated in the experiment. Participants were asked to respond to a questionnaire measuring their brand equity for a college football team. A week later, the same participants were asked to read a fictitious news article (presented as a real news article) depicting a brand uncertainty situation for the football team. The fictitious scenarios described a positive product change situation, a negative product change situation, a negative word of mouth situation, and a positive word of mouth situation. After reading these articles, participants then responded to the questionnaire measuring their brand equity. Results indicate that the majority of the participants had very strong brand equity for the team in question. There was a lack of participants with weak brand equity to determine how their brand equity would be affected by the brand uncertainty situations. However, the results for participants with strong brand equity indicate that brand equity is persistent and resistant to change in the face of one uncertain situation. These findings support previous research on consumer-based brand equity that acknowledges its importance to organizations in the long run.