Building global football brand equity: Lessons from the Chinese market
Résumé
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.