Proposing the Sports Team Brand Hierarchy Conceptual Framework

The study was inspired by the fact that there has not been a systematic sport brand equity model that uses the brand perceptions held by individual and corporate consumers of sports products to rank teams from different countries in a single hierarchy according to their levels of brand development and financial structure. In line with the exploratory sequential mixed methods research design, the first phase of the study utilised such qualitative procedures as; free-thought listing, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions to explore the antecedents, dimensions and market consequences of the brand perceptions held by Zimbabwean consumers for professional football teams. In the second phase of this study, the finding from the qualitative phase were used to generate data collection instruments for questionnaire survey. Structured observation was also used to gather data in this phase. The SPSS version 21.0 and NVivo 10 data analysis packages were used to analyze quantitative and qualitative data, respectively. The findings from the study were used to develop the Sports Team Brand Hierarchy Conceptual Framework, a conceptual model which ranks sports teams from different countries in a single hierarchy, according to financial structure and level of brand development. The framework can be used to determine the level of brand development and geographical sphere of influence of sports brands. It also provides guidelines on the growth strategies that teams, at the various levels of brand development can adopt for sustainable growth and competitive advantage.