Should Sports Team Redesign the Logo? The effects of logo redesign in determining fans' behavioral consequences

초록

Logo is a powerful element that shapes teams’ symbolic image which could ultimately determines various types of fans’ behavioral consequences, such as attitude toward the team and intention to purchase team-logoed merchandise (Holt, 1998). Despite the significant role of logo in shaping fans’ behaviors, there is a limited understanding of how sports team can effectively make changes in their logo to rebrand themselves with a few notable exceptions (e.g., Ahn et al., 2012). Logo is “a graphic representation or image that triggers memory associations of the target brand (Walsh, Winterich, & Mittal, 2010). According to the brand association theory, each element of brand, such as logo and brand status, plays a major role in determining the success of rebranding (Roy & Sarkar, 2015). In this regard, the current study proposes that logo redesign can be used as an effective way to rebrand sports teams. Particularly, the status of the team, either a traditionally winning or losing team, would determine whether major or minor changes in logo redesign will determine the success of rebranding. Because a winning team would like create a strong connection with the previous winning status, minor changes in the logo would be more effective in redesigning the logo than major changes. Meanwhile, because a previously losing team would like to cut their image as a failure, major changes in the logo redesign would be more effective for them than minor changes. In this regard, we propose the following hypothesis: H1: For a traditionally winning team, minor changes in the logo will lead to more positive attitude toward the team and greater intention to purchase team-logoed merchandise from fans compared to major changes H2: For a traditionally losing team, major changes in the logo will lead to more positive attitude toward the team and greater intention to purchase team-logoed merchandise from fans compared to minor changes