Testing the conceptual model of the causal relationship of audience consumption intentions with perceived risk and motivation

Dissertation for Ph.D.

Trend: Sports Management and Planning

1.1 Introduction

Unsettled economic situation affects the presence of all kinds of sports customers and consumers, including spectators, participants, buyers of goods and so on. It has had a significant impact. For this reason, investigating the behavior of sports consumers[1] has been of considerable importance (Kale[2] et al. 1996).

Investigation of perceived risk in the field of customer behavior, tourism[3] and recreation[4] has been of interest, but researchers have paid less attention to its impact on sports consumption[5] (James and Terrill[6], 2008) or the researcher is unaware of it.

On the other hand, research that He has investigated the reasons for watching [7] and participating [8] in sports events, often they have looked at motivation variables [9] and market demand [10] (James and Rose [11], 2002, Kale et al. 1996, Caleb and James [12], 2000). Attention to motivation without considering customer perceived risk cannot fully explain sports customer behavior. Motivation and obstacles include the perceived risk of two structures that can affect each other, if the perceived risk increases, attendance in sports fields requires more motivation, and if the perceived risk decreases, the audience does not need a high motivation to attend (James and Traill, 2008). In addition, research related to attendance at sports events has focused more on the factors related to attendance and less on the barriers related to attendance at sports events.

In any organization or company, providing quality products and creating customer loyalty is necessary for survival and success (Zidamel et al. [13], 1996). On the other hand, researches have shown that maintaining existing customers is a better investment than attracting new customers (Fornell and Vernell Felt[14], 1987, Kotler[15], 2003). Therefore, with the increase in competition in the sports markets and the current economic situation, sports organizations need a better understanding of the variables related to sports consumption in order to effectively satisfy the spectators and increase the chances of their return by maintaining the quality of products and services and reducing the risks in sports products and environments. Therefore, it is important to examine the types of risks perceived by potential sports spectators and its impact on the types of sports consumption behaviors. 2.1 Statement of the problem To compensate for the high costs of holding sports events, sports managers need methods to identify various factors that can reduce and prevent the presence of spectators and other consumption behaviors such as suggestions to others, media consumption and purchase of goods, so that they can finally develop marketing strategies with the aim of reducing customer desertion. Based on the amount of time and financial resources that people allocate to sports and event consumption activities, sports consumer behavior is an important and main aspect of marketers' work. As a result, marketing actions [16] should develop a better understanding of consumer decision-making before developing any strategy (Kalb and James, 2000).

However, according to Eisen [17] in the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) [18], the most important determinant of consumer behavior is behavioral intention [19] and the greater the behavioral intention, the more likely the behavior will occur (Eisen, 1991). Therefore, behavioral intention, if carefully examined, can determine the behavior of consumers in the future.

Consumer behavior focuses on why and how customers choose to spend money in order to purchase goods and services. But many factors affect the behavior of consumers and their purchase decisions. One of the most comprehensive models describing consumer behavior is the systematic model of consumer decision making. The input components of this consumer decision model include external effective factors that act as information sources related to a specific product and influence the values, attitudes, and behaviors related to the product on the part of the consumer. Among the most important external factors, we can mention the marketing activities of organizations in the form of specific marketing mix strategies (4p), including the course of promotional measures, pricing policy and the choice of distribution channels to transfer products from the producer to the consumer.The inputs of the second type or the socio-cultural environment are factors such as social class, culture and subculture, and the processing components in this model include internal influencing factors such as motivation, perception, learning, personality and attitudes. The act of consumer decision-making in the processing stage includes three stages: 1) need recognition, 2) pre-purchase search, and 3) evaluation of options. It is after these stages that the consumer buys and finally buys again (James and Traill, 2008).

In the current research, two internal factors that affect the consumer, i.e. consumer motivation and perception, are examined. Perceived risk has different dimensions that include financial-time, functional, psychological-social and physical-environmental risk, and on the other hand, the amount of perceived risk [21] by the customer can affect their buying behavior, the researcher seeks to find out what effect the perceived risk and motivation will have on the behavior of sports customers and how each type of perceived risk can be related to the types of behavioral intentions of sports consumers.

Motivation

Sport consumption

Perceived risk

Figure 1.1 Conceptual model of research

3.1 Necessity and importance of research

Sports and sports events have significant social effects. These effects leave results on human society that change the way people live, work and communicate with each other. Participation in sports, whether active or passive, has become an attractive strategy for local, regional, and national governments to provide social benefits to community residents (Johnson and Whitehead [22], 2000).

Despite the importance of sports and events, many countries experience a decline in active sports participants (Van Slages [23] et al., 2005). Sports and events can affect health and well-being, social cohesion, economic effects, and the formation of cultural and national identities (Betten and Funk [24] 2008). Therefore, playing and watching sports requires a better understanding of sports consumer behavior.

On the other hand, in the sports watching industry, because the primary product[25] that is sold to the customer is the sports event, which, like other services[26], has unique characteristics such as imperceptibility[27], heterogeneity[28] and perishability[29] (Moulin et al.[30] 2007, Shank[31], 2005, Zhang et al.[32], 1995) and because it is customer-oriented[33] it has a higher level of perceived risk (McDougall and Snetsinger[34], 1990).

Despite the unique characteristics of sports and the different behaviors of its consumers, only two studies investigate the risk perceived by consumers in sports. Although the risk received in other areas such as tourism, the times of the Euphrates and  It has been measured in many ways, but research has shown that perceived risk varies by context and has not been fully explored as a barrier to spectator attendance and other behavioral intentions among sports consumers. On the other hand, investigating the factors affecting the behavior of sports consumers, especially the factors that prevent attendance, can be useful for society, marketers, private and government organizations that provide sports services, and government policy makers. Governments can use sports events to build community identity and create jobs. Sports sponsors can increase brand awareness, launch new products and services, and create new markets. Finally, sports and sports organizations can use sports events to promote sports services and products and expand sports.

Since customer decisions include evaluating the positive and negative characteristics of the product, and even customers tend to give more weight to negative information than positive information when evaluating these characteristics, therefore, the current research seeks to investigate the impact of perceived risk factors and motivation on behavioral intentions or sports consumption behaviors in the future, because gaining a deep understanding of the motivation and risks that spectators have regarding attending games They have realized that it enables marketers and sports organizations to allocate their resources in order to increase motivation and reduce the perceived risk and its negative effects on the return of spectators.

4.