Building global
football brand
equity
55
Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing
and Logistics
Vol. 22 No. 1, 2010
pp. 55-66
# Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1355-5855
DOI 10.1108/13555851011013155
Received December 2008
Revised April 2009
Accepted April 2009
Building global football brand
equity
Lessons from the Chinese market
Guillaume Bodet
Institute of Sport and Leisure Policy, School of Sport and Exercise Sciences,
Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK, and
Nicolas Chanavat
EA 647, Centre de Recherche et d’Innovation sur le Sport (CRIS),
Universite
´
Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (UCBL), Villeurbanne, France
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the perceived brand equity of professional
football clubs on foreign markets as these clubs firmly want to expand and reach a global brand
status.
Design/methodology/approach – Fitting with an inductive approach, 12 semi-structured
interviews are conducted in order to analyse the perceptions of Chinese fans of four English
Premier League clubs.
Findings – The results of this research highlight the fact that the strength of professional football
brand equity on the Chinese market is strongly determined by the level of brand awareness and
perceived quality but, due to the increasing competition on foreign markets, professional football
clubs need to clearly define their strategic marketing in order to improve the two other dimensions of
brand equity, which are brand image and loyalty, which represents crucial stake to distinguish
themselves.
Originality/value – The results provide useful information for professional clubs in general which
want to become global but also provide relevant ways to improve brand equity for the four clubs
investigated. This paper is one of the first to analyse perceived brand equity of professional clubs in
direct competition among foreign potential or current customers.
Keywords Brand equity, International business, Football, China
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
As noted by Hong (2002), the present Asian sport is characterised by the process of
globalisation which, according to this author, induces changes in the sport systems,
increasing involvement of the media, increasing dependence on sponsorship and the
growth of a sports industry, and China and Japan seem for him relevant examples of
this process. These features do not seem exhaustive and some authors may add the
increasing number and importance of mega-sporting events in Asia to the list (Dolles
and So
¨
derman, 2008). Numerous factors can explain this tendency such as the growing
interest of national governments and cities (Dolles and So
¨
derman, 2008) or the
differences in term of labour cost (Hong, 2002) for instance, but the desire of
international organisations to conquer new markets certainly represents one of the
main factor as Asia hosts a third of the world’s population (Hong, 2002) and some of the
fastest growing economies in the world (e.g. China and India). Professional sport clubs
and leagues such as the National Basketball Association, the Major League of Baseball
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The authors would like to acknowledge Zhong Shi for his help in the data collection process.