Research On Decision Making Of Sponsoring Sports Event: From The Perspective Of Enterprises

Sports industry has developed quickly worldwide since 50s in 20th century. As the most important part of sports industry, sports event is very attractive because of sharp competition and unexpected ending, while is influential in the world through mass media's broadcasting. Sports event is a special communication tool, which can deliver a corporate idea and product information to specific target people, thus enterprises rush off to the front to sponsor it. Some firms get much after sports event marketing, as examples are Coca Cola and Samsung, others more waste much money. Those failures owe to many reasons, and decision mistaking of sponsoring sports event is a reason. So searching scientific method to assessing sponsorship for enterprises before sports event is very important.This paper took companies which sponsored sports event as study object. By using the methods of literature, interview, questionnaire, mathematical statistics, logical analysis and case analysis, gathered materials about decision making behavior and psychology of companies before sponsoring a sports event, gave corresponding solutions in the light of problems companies had made decisions about sponsorship. The paper analyzed decision behavior according to specific firm, and established decision making management frame, which included the decision object, decision principles, decision process and decision method. This decision method system involved three levels:SWOT matrix analysis method at the stage of strategy, Multi-objective decision-making method at the stage of marketing planning, Effective on Cost decision making method at the stage of communication (sports event selection). A case study proved that the three methods were suitable to a company when it needed making a decision about sports event sponsorship.The author draws conclusions as follows:(1) The corporations in China have developed certain scale, operated many businesses, had several product lines, and become more multifunctional. Sponsors are generally in a growth-oriented competitive situation, with overall cost leadership strategy and growth-oriented and integrated marketing strategy. They have developed a detailed marketing plan, invested 2% to 5% of sales revenue at sponsorship, treated advertising as the most common marketing way, set up a special department in charge of marketing activities.(2) Most sponsors regard sponsorship as one element in the marketing mix as well as an investment action. They think promoting awareness index of product or service and establishing a good image in the public as the most important aims of sponsoring sports event. Also they think the importance of indexes which affect their sponsorship target are not the same. If the targets of sponsorship do not match the marketing aims, or event target audience and company's goal objects to communicate do not match, or Company does not have sufficient budget, the company will not sponsor a sports event.(3) For the sponsorship of major sports event, most sponsors have requested specialized agencies or specialized departments make their own assessment; for those sponsorship projects which occupy less money, sponsors have a routine review process to evaluate them. They have three most common ways to get sponsorship proposal: contacting with organizers of event, getting promotion from sports organizations or governments. The CEO, managers of brand or marketing of sponsors could say "Yes" or "No" to a sponsorship proposal. The operation method for major sports event most looks like event marketing's. The ultimate goal of sponsoring sports event is to promote sales, and different comprehensions to sponsorship lead to different expectations for sponsorship effects.(4) The starting point of sponsoring an event for corporations should be their marketing needs. The object of marketing decision making are all kinds of marketing plans and sports event sponsorship schemes, which solve "Whether" sponsoring sports event and sponsoring "What" kind of sports event separately. Decision making needs to develop a reasonable strategy, and follow certain principles to develop strategies. Decision making process can be carried out in accordance with the following:setting the most primitive needs of enterprise as a starting point, establishing strategic, marketing and communication objectives of the three levels, finding the policy direction, setting up evaluation criteria, selecting program and signing a contract of event sponsorship. Decision making also needs scientific method, the suggested methods in this paper are SWOT matrix analysis method, Multi-objective decision-making method and Effective on Cost decision making method.