Consumer orientation toward sporting events: Scale development and validation

Journal of Service Research

Abstract

Sporting events offer a strong emotional value to consum- ers and therefore occupy a prominent role in their life. In addition, they represent an important market potential for sponsors with an economic value in excess of $200 billion a year. A growing concern shared by researchers and sports marketers is to understand the various motivations that bring individuals to consume sporting events and re- lated goods and services. The present research offers a definition of the concept of orientation toward a sporting event (OSE), develops a reliable instrument that captures its various facets, carefully validates the OSE scale in dif- ferent contexts, and, finally, illustrates how this instrument may be used as a valuable segmentation tool.