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The meaning transfer phenomenon proposed by McCracken (1986)
gives an account of the movement of meaning from the culture
constituted world to consumer products. Though meaning transfer
could explain many marketing phenomena, it has been less
researched in literature. Over the last decade, the meaning
transfer phenomenon has been used in celebrity endorsements
literature to a certain extent (Peetz et al., 2004; Byrne
et al., 2003; and Batra and Homer, 2004) which was in turn
proposed by McCracken (1989). The area of event sponsorships
is one where the meaning transfer phenomenon becomes very
important. Since the sponsor wants to gain mileage from
the event, it is desired that the meanings associated with
the event transfer are attributed to the sponsor brand.
Thus, the current study tries to analyze the meaning transfer
phenomenon in event sponsorship in the Indian context. The
study intends to use an experimental design to fulfill the
objective. The study is intended to benefit academia as
well as the industry since event sponsorship is a popular
form of promotion used by the marketers.
Event sponsorship is an essential ingredient of the marketing
mix of an organization and has recently garnered a lot of
interest in both academic and business environments. It
has now emerged as one of the steadily growing areas in
marketing communications. A perusal of academic literature
shows that sponsorship has now upgraded itself from playing
the supporting role of an organization's marketing strategy
to becoming the `keystone'. Businesses associating with
important events consider sponsorships as not only an instrument
of communication, but also as a complementary exercise to
their own positioning activity (Fahy et al., 2004). Rifon
et al. (2004) and Meenaghan (1991) have opined that sponsorships
can be regarded as a provision for providing assistance
to an activity in order to accomplish one's own commercial
objectives. Fahy et al. (2004) have discussed the increasing
importance of sponsorship since it gives the organization
a chance for exclusivity in comparison to the other marketing
communication activities and also because it has the potential
for global marketers to go beyond cultural boundaries. Although
sponsorship has various objectives, two of its prime objectives
are to cater to brand awareness and brand image as found
out by Crowley (1991), Meenaghan (1991), Meerabeau et al.
(1991), and Marshall and Cook (1992). The recently concluded
T20 Cricket World Cup (T20) is a very nice example of event
sponsorships. The T20 had 11 sponsors (they called themselves
partners) including Pepsi, Yahoo, Reebok and Reliance mobile.
All the sponsors of the T20 prominently placed their banners,
company logo, and advertisements at different places of
the cricket ground and the prize distribution podium (Exhibit
1). The website of the Union of European Football Associations
(UEFA) Euro 2008, which is the international football (soccer)
tournament between the European nations has the names of
all the sponsors prominently displayed. They include big
brands such as Adidas, Coca-Cola, Canon and MasterCard.
In such a scenario, the question, whether the meanings associated
with the event get transferred to the sponsor brands, becomes
more important. This study focuses on the effectiveness
of `meaning transfer' of the event sponsorships in the minds
of the consumer. The basic aim of this paper is to explain
the concept of meaning transfer in event sponsorships. This
paper draws inspiration from the concept of meaning transfer
in celebrity endorsement developed by McCracken (1989).
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