Brand Accumulation and Depreciation: Evidence from European Football Leagues

Abstract

The investigation of the dynamics of brand strength can help managers to build a marketing strategy with the focus on increasing customer loyalty and retaining customers in periods of decline. We investigate brand dynamics, specifically evolution of customer loyalty, using data on football clubs in nine European football leagues. The first stage of our analysis is focused on estimation of an attendance-based measure of customer loyalty. In the second step, annual football club customer loyalty is modeled. The results evidence that winning the league title is the key driver of customer loyalty. However, the effect is relatively low for top leagues and high for developing leagues. On average, the boost to customer loyalty caused by winning the league championship depreciates in 4 years, but the results vary substantially across the leagues. For English and German leagues, the customer loyalty does not depreciate and even grows.

Keywords

brand depreciation brand determinants attendance football sports team heritage

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