University of York



Segmenting Consumers of Professional Soccer: Identifying the ‘Enthusiast’Charlotte Pick (formerly of University of York, UK) & Dr Alex G. Gillett (University of York, UK)Corresponding Author:Dr Alex G. GillettLecturer in MarketingThe York Management SchoolUniversity of YorkFreboys LaneHeslingtonYork YO10 5GDUnited KingdomTel: +44 (0) 1904 325028Email: alex.gillett@york.ac.uk? Segmenting Consumers of Professional Soccer: Identifying the ‘Enthusiast’ABSTRACTExtant literature of association football (‘soccer’) consumers has tended to focus on supporters of top-tier teams, or on psychological or experiential factors. Contrastingly, this study was concerned with identifying customer segments based on consumer value and benefits-sought, but particular to supporters of lower-league clubs. Using survey data from the three tiers of English professional football below the English Premier League (the Championship, League 1, and League 2), we refine and update Tapp and Clowes (2002) framework of Premier League fans, exploring the behaviour of supporters of lower-tier professional clubs. From our findings, we provide a segmentation framework that can be applied by marketers as part of the business and marketing planning process. We provide a detailed picture of the views and consumption habit of lower-league soccer supporters, and identify an additional segment, the ‘Enthusiast’. We believe that this is important because much of the existing research has focused on the English Premier League (EPL) which we argue represents an atypical elite in comparison to the majority of other professional tiers of football in the UK or the rest of the European area. By focusing on lower-league football we provide a more universal study.INTRODUCTIONThe sport of association football (or soccer) is the most supported sport in the world and its consumer base is still growing (Boudway, 2018). The scope of the soccer industry is demonstrated by the fact that soccer’s global governing body FIFA has more members than the UN (De Bruijn & Leijten, 2007). The relevance for service research is that in simple terms, soccer fans are customers and soccer clubs, teams and governing institutions are service organizations.The financial pressures on clubs and the companies which own them have become more complicated, and increasing amounts of capital are invested as owners pursue success, to satisfy their supporter-base, grow the club, achieve a media profile, or in some cases to simply sustain the club’s professional status of the club. In this way, professional soccer clubs can be considered to follow their own institutional logic, that of professional sport (Gillett and Tennent, 2018). Whilst soccer has been commodified and marketing has become an increasingly important topic, the peculiar finances of football therefore make for interesting research because the sport’s consumers do not behave as predictably as those of goods brands (Neale, 1964; Kuper and Szysmnski, 2012). Although according to Abosag et al. (2012) supporters, who are orientated towards future possible achievements, see the benefits to their club of branding. As an important element of the marketing planning process (MacDonald et al., 2011) research into the segmentation of soccer fans is frequently published in market research reports (e.g. Keynote, 2015) and has also been the subject of several academic studies. Of the latter, perhaps the most notable has been Tapp and Clowes (2002) paper which focused on the English Premier League (the EPL - the elite league in England and most financially lucrative in the world) drew upon experiences within the direct marketing sector and based upon data collected during the final years of the last millennium, proposed to segment soccer fans on the basis of customer value, and sought to complement the use of ‘traditional’ geo-demographic and psychographic variables. Since Tapp and Clowes (2002) work, the amounts of money involved in the global soccer industry have increased significantly (Deloitte, 2015; Keynote, 2015), whilst the financial pressures on clubs have not subsided. A simple way to categorise football clubs’ revenues is into three broad streams: match day, broadcasting and commercial activity (Keynote, 2015). Whilst the majority of supporters (13.9 million) attend EPL games, the total attendances in the Football League reached 9.2 million in the Championship (English football’s second tier), 4.2 million in League One (the third tier) and 2.4 million in League Two (the fourth tier). In addition to having less supporters in their stadiums, clubs outside of the EPL are also unable to bargain for the same significant revenues from broadcasting. Furthermore, a lack of global television coverage limits other streams of commercial income for lower-league clubs in comparison to EPL clubs, because with less brand exposure it is more difficult to raise awareness. This disparity in the values of the leagues has widened over the years and even when compared to other leading European elite leagues, the EPL looks different, its total revenues (€2.1bn in 2012/13) being approximately double those of its nearest competitors Italy(€1.2bn), Spain (€1bn), and Germany (€1bn) (Key Note, 2015). This gap is highlighted by the fact that of the top 30 revenue generating clubs globally, 14 compete in the EPL (Deloitte, 2015).Our study investigates segmentation in relation to the behavior and attitudes of lower-league football supporters to refine and develop a framework for their segmentation. Compared to previous studies such as Tapp and Clowes (2002) and Tapp (2004) by which have placed particular focus on the EPL, which is an atypical market, our findings are more broadly applicable to a greater number of soccer clubs and their stakeholders.LITERATURE REVIEWResearch of sports fans has generated a body of literature including analysis of consumption, loyalty, and behaviour. However, extrapolating meaningful findings from the broader sport literature to the context of UK soccer is difficult because many of these studies produce very broad or very specific conclusions. For example Sebastian and Bristow’s (2000) study of college students loyalty to sport brands in comparison to those of physical goods such as fast food and blue jeans produced a blunt and overly simplistic and polarised typology of ‘fair weather’ and ‘die-hard’ sport consumer. In contrast, other research has focussed on very specific major tournaments and leagues, and national contexts where teams operate as franchises, and the importance of factors such as place, heritage, or family influence on fans’ consumption and behaviour appears overlooked (e.g. Kunkel et al., 2013). Elsewhere, research of sport marketing has produced work on the psychological aspects of consumption (Funk et al., 2000) including the importance to consumers of hedonic motives, opportunities for increased knowledge and appreciation, and social interaction (Pons et al., 2006). However such research does not consider team loyalty and although acknowledging that sport consumers spend a lot of money, authors of these psychological studies tend not to concern themselves with specific details as to what this value might be, nor any suggestion for segmentation by consumers’ potential value.Stewart et al.’s (2003) critical literature review of sport consumer typologies concludes that no archetypical model exists for sports consumption generally. They suggest models must be selected (and presumably developed and refined) for the tactical intentions of the user. Central to their argument is the claim that extant literature has tended to over-emphasise social-psychological traits, with little attention given to cultural and economic contexts, or how relationships with sport clubs are formed. They identify that not all consumers are equally passionate or fanatical, totally loyal, or use their team to confirm their personal identity. Some prefer remote types of consumption via the internet or television, whilst others attend games ‘live’ with differing levels of frequency or regularity, some are engrossed in club histories or politics, some are pro-actively engaged in the running of the club, whilst others are not and have no intention of doing so. Stewart et al (2003) therefore call for more research into consumer formation, commitment, identity and game attendance patterns, highlighting the heterogeneity of sports consumption, proposing three tiers of consumer based on how actively or passively they experience sport, ranging from ‘emotionally connected’ fans ‘who get excitement and entertainment from the big experience’ to less emotionally engaged fans who enjoy sport relatively passively but get ‘social interaction and entertainment’ from the occasion (p 208). Since Stewart et al.’s literature review, Bouchet et al. (2011) provided further empirical evidence, developing sport spectator profiles relating to consumption experience. Their work, which studied French Rugby Union consumption which, in contrast to much of the other sport consumption research, emphasised the experience within the semi-professional lower leagues rather than focussing on the elite top-tier. Bouchet et al. (2011) extended these French Rugby studies by examining ‘live’ and televised consumption of high-profile televised tennis and soccer knockout competition finals, although still limited to France, to develop the framework for segmenting, targeting and positioning consumers. This stream of work has focussed on the types of experience that consumers were seeking and across the different sports has converged to identify four spectator profiles: ‘aesthete’, ‘interactive’, ‘supporter’ and ‘opportunist’ consumers. This behavioural segmentation provides useful insights regarding attendance at sporting fixtures, motives and behavioural orientation, which may be of use to marketers. However, the typology has been developed to understand the consumer experience rather than for segmenting consumers by value. So, whilst indicating how ‘vocal’ a supporter might be at a game or how much emotion they will display whilst watching it, the typology is of no real use for market sizing or for calculating the value of a team’s supporter base or component segments.Noting the aforementioned limitations of the broader sport consumption/segmentation literature for application to our context of English association football, we now provide a critical appraisal of literature that is soccer-specific.Segmenting Soccer Clubs’ SupportersSebastian and Bristow (2000) found that US college students’ consumption of sport is dissimilar to their consumption of conventional brands, and Adamson et al.’s research shows that this assertion is also observable in the specific context of soccer consumption (2006). Loyalty is identified as being much more significant to soccer fans than it is to patrons in the majority of consumer sectors (Tapp and Clowes, 1999) and it is claimed that being loyal to a football club stretches the logical, emotional and moral boundaries of a fan’s mind (Buchanan, 1985). Giulianotti (2005) explains this in terms of identity and the extent to which fans express their commitment to the team that they follow: ‘committed supporters articulate their fan identities in terms of a way of life and duty toward supporting the team through good and bad times. These supporters differentiate themselves strongly from arm-chair fans and from glory hunters or bandwagon jumpers who conditionally follow sides.’Giulianotti (2005: 392)On the other hand, Tapp (2004) cites the attendance decline of the majority of football clubs when relegated as evidence that loyalty is a rather nebulous concept and that the football fans’ consumption may fluctuate in its intensity. Parker and Stewart (1997) summarise that believing fans to be unwavering is inaccurate and therefore unwise because many fans are casual in their loyalties. Rachman (2004) concludes that because there are limited clubs with specific religious or class associations, and few people have generational ties to a particular location, for many supporters their allegiance to a particular team is in fact somewhat random. Perhaps then, many fans have insufficient reasons to be tied to a club for life and that truly fanatical fans are no more than a ‘fantasy’ (Kuper and Szymanski, 2009).Research provides evidence that football fans can in fact be segmented based upon their loyalty levels (Tapp, 2004) and by analysing behavioural characteristics. Several frameworks exist, the most significant of which will now be discussed, all of which are summarised in Figure 1 and compared in Figure 2 below.Figure 1 – Characteristics of the varying soccer fan segments as proposed by different researchersFigure – 1 about hereFigure 2 – Convergence of the segments proposed by different researchersFigure – 2 about hereWhilst Tapp’s (2004) study of the segmentation of football fans loyalty in the UK is still the most comprehensive to date (Harris and Ogbonna, 2008) it resembles the fundamental results found by Taylor (1971) and Critcher (1979), which identified three segments of football fans – members, customers and consumers. These vary from members who saw themselves as representatives and had strong feelings of responsibility towards their club, to consumers who had no brand loyalty and chose their clubs based upon the perceived social gains that it would bring them. Further research was undertaken following the Hillsborough stadium disaster and the publication of the Taylor Report: King (1997) concluded that these events had merged fan segments into only two groups – lads (authentic fans who know the history of their club and partake in club rituals such as singing and pre-match drinking) and new consumers (those that attend matches to gain social acceptance, often adorned in head-to-toe memorabilia, but who avoid the weekly football rituals due to lack of knowledge).Conversely Giulianotti (2002) determined that due to the commercialisation of football, fans are becoming increasing detached from their team. Whilst there is still a supporter segment, based upon the member segment of Critcher (1979), consumers are now moving towards both the fan and fl?neur segments. Fans show their support through merchandise rather than attendance, choosing a club based upon their star player and being interested in the players celebrity lifestyle as opposed to the football – known as the ‘Beckham effect’ (Giulianotti and Gerrard, 2001). Consumers in the fl?neur segment show support through a virtual relationship via the internet and television (Giulianotti, 2002). This study was the first of its kind to consider the increasing use of technology and growing obsession with celebrity, factors that increase the segments representation of real-life fans today. Tapp (2004) provides a strong contribution by presenting a data-driven conceptualization of the drivers of fan loyalty. He suggested that in the modern game, fans could be segmented into four different groups: fanatic, repertoire and casual (either carefree or committed). According to Tapp; fanatics view being a fan as part of their self-image, are dedicated to the club as an entity and collect memorabilia although there will still be loyalty churn even within the segment, repertoire fans take enjoyment from watching a variety of games as well as their own, due to a love of the sport rather than one club. Committed casuals are high on attitudinal loyalty but low on behavioural loyalty, whilst carefree casuals are low on both; tending to use football to promote their social self-image by backing the underdog (Bristow and Sebastian, 2001) or basking in the team’s glory. The Tapp and Clowes (2002) study provides the most comprehensive overview of the financial value of each fan type to their football club, and as might be expected, found financial spend per season to be positively correlated with level of loyalty. Conversely, Giulianotti (2002) and King (1997) state that lower loyalty fans that collect memorabilia to display commitment, have a higher financial value. Consistent with these findings, Harris and Ogbonna (2008) show that not all of a soccer clubs ‘customers’ make equal financial contributions to organisations, including even the most vociferous and apparently loyal fans. Their study shows how some forms of loyalty result in financial gain, others do not. Their segmentation of soccer consumers into seven categories shows for example that ‘old-timers’ and ‘die-hard fanatics’ have higher psychological connection and attachment to the club but feel they do not need to wear club merchandise to be loyal, and view the wearing of club paraphenalia as flambouyant and ‘nongenuine’ (pg 394). As such, the ‘club-connected supporters’ may contribute more to the profitability of their club. Harris and Ogbona (2008) suggest this finding should be incorporated into soccer club’s financial and strategic planning, and to develop carefully targeted strategies to maximise benefits fro and for each customer group. However, it should be noted the research provides no meaningful financial analysis nor consideration of how a club might weight the value the things that a supporter might purchase to support the assertion. Another important point is that Harris and Ogbona (2008) emphasise the case for relational marketing based on trust and commitment, and consistent with Giulianotti (2002) found that taking loyal supporters for granted by commodifying soccer risks undermining the potential of having a loyal supporter base by creating distrust of clubs and eventually the emotional detachment of fans.Club Performance and Supporter LoyaltyStudies published 12 years apart by Ipsos Mori (2003) and Kantar Media (2014 cited by Keynote, 2015) discovered that whilst 45% of the British public claimed to be football fans, most consume soccer via TV and other media channels, but do not attend matches. The idea of ‘loyalty’ therefore seems important. ‘Loyalty’ in the context of marketing can be considered to mean a biased positive behavioural response over time towards a particular brand as opposed to its alternatives (e.g. Jacoby and Kyner, 1973). Loyalty may in turn lead to deep relationships between consumers and service providers, but such relationships can be of different strength or significance ranging from deep-rooted relationships dependent on commitment and trust (Morgan and Hunt, 1994) to ersatz relationships based on convenience or entrapment (e.g. Reicheld, 1996). Consistent with this, consumers of sport demonstrate different levels of commitment towards the teams they support, although the attitudes, motives, and behaviour of sport consumers are particularly interesting because of the different degrees of loyalty amongst a team’s spectators, and the different ways that it is expressed through consumption. Evidence suggests that when teams are promoted, some fans become vocal about their support, hoping to gain social acceptance, and vice versa with relegation (Richardson and O’Dwyer, 2001). Supporter segmentation research has examined the relationship between loyalty-based segments of supporters, and supporter behavior. Findings demonstrate that the less loyal the supporter, the greater the likelihood that they will increase their attendance when their club is promoted and decrease their attendance when their team is relegated (Critcher, 1979; Giulianotti, 2002; Tapp, 2004) although some of the most loyal fans (fanatics) also reduce attendance after relegation (Tapp, 2004); disproving the blind support expected of fanatical fans by Critcher and Taylor. Attendances become higher when league standings have a higher chance of changing, even in a fight to avoid relegation (Neale, 1965). Similarly, loyalty of fans in various sports can actually increase when team performance lowers, due to an increasing sense of team and fan togetherness developing through backing the underdog (Bristow and Sebastian, 2001; Lang and Lang, 1984).A further consideration is that there have been significant developments in the use of technology as a means by which to consume information and soccer service products since many of these studies were published. For example, Tapp and Clowes (2002) and Tapp (2004) give little consideration to the ways in which many fans keep up-to-date with their team’s performance through the internet and social media, and would still classify themselves as loyal; in Tapp’s study, this potentially large segment is not even considered.Study AimsIt seems logical that lower league clubs will have a higher percentage of hardcore or fanatical fans than a club in the Premier League. This is because of the dedication required to commit time and effort to supporting relatively unsuccessful clubs. These teams are less likely to attract fair weather ‘glory’ supporters (Conn, 2005; Kuper and Szymanski, 2012). However, even in the modern era with greater TV coverage (Williams, 1994) and improved public transport, lower league clubs still need to maintain an emotional attachment with fans; one that does not rely upon local proximity (Williams and Neatrour, 2002). For example, existing literature informs us that parental influence can be very influential upon sport fans’ loyalty towards a sport, team, or player (Hunt et al., 1999). According to Abosag et al. (2012) support for a club is often handed down from one generation to the next.From our literature review we arrived at the following research question: To what extent are existing frameworks for segmenting soccer supporters applicable to lower-league clubs? To answer the over-arching research question, we can paraphrase Tapp’s (2004) research question as: To what extent does the loyalty of lower-league football clubs’ supporters follow the ‘rules’ familiar to marketers? Based on the findings of the above literature review, as well as on our own experiences and observations as soccer consumers, we also identified nine propositions, from which the resulting data was used to develop conclusions about lower-league football supporter segments:Consumers who strongly agree that they are loyal supporters of their club will be more likely to have a season ticket than those who slightly agree, slightly disagree or strongly disagree. Consumers who strongly agree that they are loyal supporters of their club will be less likely to increase attendance if the club was promoted than those who slightly agree, slightly disagree or strongly disagree. Consumers who have season tickets will attend more away games than those that do not have season tickets. Consumers who are season ticket holders will be less likely to support another team than those that do not own season tickets. The lower the percentage of a consumer’s lifetime that they have spent supporting the club, the more likely they are to buy a season ticket if the club is promoted. Consumers who strongly agree that they are loyal supporters of their club will be more likely to know details about the club’s next match than those who slightly agree, slightly disagree or strongly disagree. Consumers who are season ticket holders will be more likely to buy memorabilia than those that do not have season ticket, and they will spend more when doing so. Consumers who strongly agree that they are loyal supporters of their club will be more likely to regard football as a definite choice on a Saturday than those who slightly agree, slightly disagree or strongly disagree. Consumers that have a family history of supporting their club will be more likely to have a season ticket. METHODOLOGYA questionnaire survey was undertaken to collect quantitative and qualitative data about the behaviour and attitudes of lower league football fans. We decided to sample fans of a variety of football clubs in response to the limitations we perceived in Tapp and Clowes’ (2002) research (which focused on fans from only one football club, an unnamed Premier League club from the Midlands) and Abosag et al.’s (2012) study of brand emotion and brand extension which surveyed supporters from just two Norwegian clubs. For our research, we decided to garner responses from fans of as many English clubs as possible within the three tiers of professional league football below the EPL (i.e. the Championship, League 1, and League 2). The target population had a wide reach and online questionnaires allowed respondents to reply from any geographical location (Selm and Jankowski, 2006). By completing questionnaires online, respondents were anonymous, which is thought to increase response rate and encourage more truthful results (Coomber, 1997). The Football Forum has over 31,000 members and is one of the biggest of its kind in the UK suggesting it would provide access to a wide-range of football fans. The fans that do not go to football games were just as important in this research as those that do, however they are much more difficult to access; a problem overcome through the internet (Selm and Janowski, 2006) although it is acknowledged that they were more likely to be highly engaged with soccer as they proactively use the supporter website and self-selected participate. Whilst the online survey offered the opportunity to obtain a spread of data representing the breadth of our target population, we could not accurately predict how many fans would respond to our post on the Football Forum website. Because response rate is usually highest for face-to-face surveys (Czaja and Blair, 2005) questionnaires were also conducted ‘in-person’ at the ground of a League 2 team with a reported average attendance of approximately 3900 supporters (Football League, 2014). League 2 is the fourth tier of professional football in England and is the lowest of the divisions within the English Football League. This particular club and stadium was chosen on the basis that the club’s history showed it as having spent much of its existence in the lower tiers of the league meaning that it was a reasonably typical case, even if we could not prove whether or not the supporters sampled were representative of the entire population. Questionnaires were attached to a clipboard and passed to fans to complete. Questions were not read to respondents, instead giving them time to answer them independently. This survey method is normally low on response bias (Czaja and Blair, 2005).In total, our study is based upon 136 respondents. A database was created using SPSS software to store and analyse the data, that was downloaded from the online survey software and manually inputted from the stadium ‘in-person’ survey. We coded our results to facilitate advanced statistical analysis, on the basis of positive results being allocated higher numbers, for example attending ‘all home games’ was given a value of 4 whilst ‘no games’ was given a value of 0. Basic cross-tabulation was undertaken and graphical models such as bar charts were used to generate a descriptive statistical overview. We then undertook a more advanced and nuanced analysis, for which we used chi-square to test our proposition hypotheses. Due to the responses being both ordinal and nominal, chi-square was the only suitable statistical method to examine the relationships between these variables (Vaughan, 2001). We compared all variables with one another, which allowed us to be exploratory and probe our data for additional relationships other than those related to the original hypothesis. Results reported in this paper were tested and retested by both authors to ensure consensus of findings, and to ensure reliability and replicability of the data and method of analysis. After analysing the survey data, we compared our results to the findings of our literature review, allowing us to interpret our empirical findings in relation to each other and also to previous works (Wolcott, 1994).FINDINGSWe applied Pearson’s chi-square test to all but one of our propositions (Proposition 5), for which we used box-plot analysis. From our chi-square analysis summarized in Figure 3 we found that the majority demonstrated a degree of statistical significance (three were highly significant and a further two were significant) and therefore supported our assumptions about supporter loyalty. Although not surprising, such findings were useful as an evidence base from which to develop existing segmentation theory.Figure 3 – Summary of Research Proposition Analysis Figure-3 about here*Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 levelWhilst chi-square could have been used to test Proposition 5, a box plot permitted the distribution of the results to be expressed visually. This allowed an association to be determined through a median value, often a more effective method for a proposition such as this one (Potter et al., 2006). The box plot (Figure 4) shows that those fans who would buy a season ticket if promoted have supported the club for a median average of 55.357% of their lifetime whilst fans who would not buy a season ticket in the same scenario have a median average of 73.364%. Additionally this is supported by the smaller range and higher values that are found in the interquartile range. This result was not entirely surprising as we had assumed that fans who had supported their club for the greatest percentage of their lifetime would also be the most devoted, and hence would already own a season ticket if possible.Figure 4.Box plot for proposition 5Figure – 4 about hereIn addition to the findings that supported our assumptions and did indicate statistically significant relationships between variables, Figure 3 also shows three propositions (7, 8 and 9) that demonstrated no degree of statistical significance. Furthermore, having split Proposition 2 into two parts, we were also surprised that Proposition 2b yielded no statistical significance, whereas 2a did, although this could perhaps be explained by the fact that only a low proportion of fans even travel to away matches and a larger sample might have yielded different results.Regarding Proposition 7, the chi-squared test (=0.047, p=0.828) and the gamma value (0.039) all indicated no relationship between a fan being a season ticket holder and their likelihood of buying merchandise. This was interesting because we assumed a demonstrable relationship would have been found, on the basis that season ticket holders would want to spend more on memorabilia to ensure that they had the latest merchandise when attending matches. We can only speculate that perhaps the money that they spent on the season ticket itself and associated travel costs to and from matches was prohibitive to making additional purchases in the club shop.Our analysis of Proposition 8 showed no significant relationship between the fans level of loyalty and choice of activity on a Saturday (chi square = 5.407, p=0.067, gamma value =.399). We were surprised by this result because it had seemed logical to us that self-proclaimed ‘loyal’ supporters would tend to want to attend every match.Proposition 9 was concerned with the relationship between having a family history of supporting a particular team and the likelihood of owning a season ticket. It was our assumption that fans who had grown up supporting their team would have a routine of going to most matches and therefore would be more likely to own a season ticket. Of our respondents, 61.7% claimed to have a family history of supporting their team; over 10% more than those that own a season ticket. The chi squared test (chi square=0, p=0.989) and gamma value (-.002) contradicted our assumption, demonstrating that no significant relationship existed between a fan owning a season ticket and having a family history of supporting the club. As well as the analysis of our research propositions, testing between other variables yielded some other results that were interesting because they appeared contradictory to our assumptions. These findings are presented in Figure 5 and are described below.Figure 5: Summary of Notable Findings from Additional AnalysisTable – 5 about here* = Correlation is significant at the 0.05 levelBased on an assumption that fans might prefer to spend their money on tickets for games if their team was playing well, we analysed the relationship between opinion on team performance and purchasing season tickets. However, we found no significant relationship between opinion on team performance and renewal of season tickets if relegated (chi square=4.180, p=0.243) or buying a season ticket if promoted (chi square=1.962, p=0.580). We also probed further the findings of Proposition 4, although instead of investigating a link between season ticket ownership and watching other teams we analysed the relationship between respondents’ stated degree of loyalty to their club and how often they watch other teams. Our findings were somewhat surprising (chi square=4.147, p=0.126) considering the expectation that loyal fans would only follow one team.Regarding family history, our chi-squared tests show that it has an association with only one variable – opinion of team performance (chi-square=8.268, p=0.041) suggesting family history is less important than might be expected, after all it seems reasonable to assume that having a family history would mean fans were more likely to demonstrate ‘loyal’ behaviours such as owning season tickets and attending more away games, for example.A final interesting finding was that there was no significant relationship between fans’ perceived level of loyalty and attendance if relegated. Nor was there a relationship between perceived loyalty and likelihood of increased attendance of away matches if their team was promoted (chi square=.847, p=0.655). These were surprising results because we would expect that the attendance of loyal fans would remain unchanged with promotion or relegation, whilst those fans who are less loyal would have a greater tendency to change attendance based upon the league position of their team.DISCUSSIONUnsurprisingly, owning a season ticket and having a strong personal belief of loyalty to a club appear to be the strongest indicators of a fans commitment to their club, having strong associations with many of the other variables in this study. However, findings relating to our research propositions 7, 8 and 9 indicated that self-perceived loyalty provides no significant indication as to a supporter’s likelihood of buying memorabilia, having a family history with their club, or whether or not they regard football as their definite choice of activity. In particular, we were surprised by the lack of influence that family history seems to have upon the commitment of fans to their clubs, having assumed that both the influence from family members and presumably then also an association with the club from a young age would affect a fan’s dedication.Developing a New Framework for Segmenting Soccer Consumers, including Supporters of Lower League ClubsThe empirical findings from our study allow us to update and extend the existing literature by proposing a new segment of supporter type. Having discovered convergence between the existing models, we took the segment titles from the most recent (Tapp, 2004), and examined for fit with the responses to our own survey. Firstly, findings showed Tapp’s fanatic, regular, committed casual and carefree casual fan types can also be used to classify supporters in the lower-leagues. However, based upon the away attendance findings, where only 4% attend all away matches but a further 19% attend between 10-18 matches, it seems unreasonable to have such a small percentage as fanatics and classify all others as regulars or below when many of them display all of the other attributes that would be associated with a fanatical fan. We therefore suggest a new category between fanatic and regular fans should be introduced – the enthusiast.We then examined our segments in relation to the variables identified by previous studies, removing those which we found had no significant relationship with loyalty, namely: amount of merchandise bought; watching other teams; choice of activity on a match day, and; family history. We were left with a list of fan types or segments, and a list of relevant variables or attributes, which related to the segments to different extents. These are shown in Figure 6 which illustrates our framework for segmenting lower league soccer supporters as consumers – for example, a fan would be a true fanatic if they have a season ticket, attend all home and away games (and cannot therefore increase their home attendance if promoted), know the details of the next match, have supported their team for the majority of their lifetime, and state that they are strongly loyal to their club.Figure 6 – Attributes to determine fan typologyFigure – 6 about hereBecause our findings showed some variables as being more significant for determining loyalty than others, we concluded that different weightings are needed to represent this. For example, there is a highly significant relationship between being a season ticket holder and loyalty and so season ticket ownership has a high weighting. Conversely, a fan’s own stated opinion on their strength of loyalty has been shown to differ greatly from their actual behaviour, therefore whilst it is still important, it has been allocated a lower weighting.These variables have then been split into the criteria used for the questionnaire with a value allocated for each, based upon the most loyal behaviour gaining the highest score (Figure 7). For example, if a fan answered yes to being a season ticket holder, they would gain a score of 1, which would be multiplied by the variables weighting (0.2).Figure 7 – Weightings and scores for each variableFigure – 7 about hereA fan’s responses to each variable can be coded and awarded a ‘score’, which can then be multiplied by the weighting to give a weighted score for each variable. The sum total of weighted variable scores provides an overall score to determine their typology as shown in Figure 8. For example, if the sum total of a fan’s weighted score is 0.9, they would be a true fanatic. Applying this framework to our empirical data suggests that of the fans surveyed, 19% were true fanatics, 52% were enthusiasts, 20% were regulars, 8% were committed casuals and 1% were carefree casuals.Figure 8 – Expected score for each type of football fanFigure – 8 about hereOther than Tapp and Clowes (2002), the financial value of fans is a subject of limited research. It is stated that financial value of a fan increases in line with their loyalty levels; a theory supported by our findings. Whilst loyal fans are no more likely to buy memorabilia than those who are less loyal, higher attendance increases their financial value. Using the segmentation framework proposed in this paper together with ‘average spend’ data calculated from figures published in the BBC (2015) Price of Football Survey we were able to roughly illustrate the value of a typical fan in each segment, per Football League tier (Figures 9, 10 and 11). Figure 9: Estimated Annual Spend of a Typical Fan in Each Segment (Championship)Figure – 9 about hereFigure 10: Estimated Annual Spend of a Typical Fan in Each Segment (League 1)Figure – 10 about hereFigure 11: Estimated Annual Spend of a Typical Fan in Each Segment (League 2)Figure – 11 about hereFigures 9, 10 and 11 show a substantial difference in value between the segments and between the different tiers of football. The lowest value, Carefree Casuals in League 2 are less than 1/10th the value of Fanatics supporting Championship Teams. It is acknowledged that the values in the tables are not fully comprehensive, as they include only the areas of spending included in the BBC Price of Football Survey and not other important areas such as money spent on Travel Clubs, lotteries, social clubs and so on. The figures do however illustrate roughly the proportional difference in spending between the different segments and league tiers in terms of some of the main revenue streams. It is envisaged that football clubs and marketing consultants could do their own more nuanced calculations by surveying the spending habits of their own particular supporter base in relation to whichever products and services they want to include, using a similar method.ConclusionsAlthough limited to the lower-leagues in a single country, England, the findings of this study should also be applicable to clubs operating in the top tier (EPL) and are also more likely to be relevant in other national contexts than previous studies that have focused only the EPL, which has particular characteristics that are atypical compared with other leagues. The original contribution stems from the unique nature of the empirical study. Despite there being previous work on the subject of soccer fan segmentation, most notably Tapp and Clowes (2002) and Tapp (2004), both studies are now over ten years old and their segmentation typology based on research of the highest tier of English football. Other studies, such as Giulianotti’s (2002) conceptual paper, lacked empirical grounding. We have updated and extended the literature with our study, which was concerned specifically with supporters of clubs in the lower leagues (where the majority of professional teams compete), by proposing a more nuanced framework that should be more accurate and applicable to the majority of football clubs. The importance of this research for marketing managers lies in its potential to help lower-league football clubs, which often operate in a situation of limited or constrained financial resources, to more accurately segment their supporters as consumers. Agreeing with the literature, our research found that owning a season ticket, attending away games and knowing details of their teams’ next match could all be used as indicators of a fan’s loyalty to their team. However, some of our findings contradicted those of Tapp (2004) as the following criteria did not display a significant relationship with a fans level of loyalty: having a family history of supporting their team, buying club memorabilia, choice of activity on a Saturday or going to watch other teams live. On the other hand, we found that a new criteria, percentage of life spent supporting their team, was found to represent a strong indicator of a fan’s loyalty.Our segmentation framework could be used by football clubs to target their marketing campaigns at particular fan types, but it will need clubs to realise the significance and potential of marketing and to adopt a proactive approach to develop and maintain supporter databases. Alternatively, the direct marketing could be the domain of third party consultants and our model would equally as useful to them. Perhaps the advantage to clubs undertaking the function themselves would be the ownership of the data, and the framework analysis could be undertaken quite easily using readily available ‘off-the-shelf’ software such as SPSS or MS Excel.Whilst we have made the case for using behaviour and attitude data to predict the financial value of a soccer club’s supporter base and component segments, we concede that not everything can be measured directly in financial terms. For example, an important differentiator between our ‘Fanatics’ and ‘Enthusiasts’ is attendance at Away fixtures. Because of the way that gate receipts are allocated, it is the Home club that would really benefit from the actual ticket sales. What is more difficult to measure, but is no doubt important for the Away team is the effect of having their travelling supporters in the stadium, cheering on their club.Additionally, whilst some supports see increasing cost and consumerism in the sport as a way to express their commitment to their team and perceive it as necessary to improving safety and comfort of the match-day experience, there is also evidence to suggest supporters do not always welcome the business-focussed rhetoric associated with some modern soccer clubs - such as when they use of the terms ‘customer’ or ‘consumer’ to describe the supporter (Giulianotti, 2005). 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