Fans behave as buyers? Assimilate fan-based and team-based drivers of fan engagement

Purpose: Customer engagement, as one form of interactive marketing, enhances organisational performance, in terms of sales growth, superior competitive advantage and increased profitability, particularly within the sports context. This research aims to explore fans' engagement behaviours with their sports teams and identify its drivers and outcomes. Design/methodology/approach: The researchers deployed mixed methods in this study via three phases: (1) A judgmental sampling technique, along with snowballing, were used to conduct in-depth interviews with twenty-two football fans, for the exploratory phase; (2) A convenience sample was also used for the quantitative phase, which was divided into two stages, (1) the pretesting stage (30 fans), and (2) the main data collection stage (407 fans) and (3) A judgmental sampling technique was applied for the qualitative validation phase (10 interviews with experts and practitioners). Findings: Qualitative and quantitative results supported team jealousy, team competitiveness and team morality as new predictors for fan engagement behaviours. Further, while the fan role readiness had the most positive effect on management cooperation, team identification had the most predicting power for prosocial behaviour. Finally, team morality had the most significant positive impact on performance tolerance. Originality/value: Despite the considerable practical attention, and the recent extensive research, paid towards conceptualising customer engagement behaviours in the last decade, there is still a need for further exploration on the fan engagement concept to better understand fans' unique behavioural responses; accordingly, the current research was conducted.