Purpose

Sponsorship has become an important marketing activity. However, research on the topic treats the sponsorship context, characterized according to the type of sponsored property and the social role of these properties, as a stable characteristic or as a dichotomous characteristic within empirical studies. Therefore, the authors outline a multi-level typology of the different types of sponsorship contexts to account for traditional types of sponsorship as well as emerging themes such as online sponsorship. The authors then propose an agenda for future research.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conduct a general review of the sponsorship literature to synthesize established sponsorship types with newly emerging themes to develop a multi-level typology of sponsorship contexts and a research agenda.

Findings

The authors’ conceptual analysis revealed a typology of sponsorship contexts that captures both general and specific types of sports sponsorship, prosocial cause sponsorship, culture and community sponsorship, and media and programming content sponsorship.

Research limitations/implications

The authors’ typology provides an organizing framework for future research focussing on different sponsorship contexts. However, the emergent categories still require further empirical testing. Therefore, the authors develop a set of questions to guide future research on the topic.

Practical implications

The authors’ typology outlines the different sponsorship contexts that should be considered by organizations that engage in sponsorship-linked marketing.

Originality/value

This paper provides a multi-level categorization of sponsorship contexts that integrates both traditional categories and newly emerging categories to better inform future research on situational differences in sponsorship.

中文翻译：

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重点赞助：赞助背景和研究议程的类型

目的

赞助已成为一项重要的营销活动。但是，有关该主题的研究将赞助背景（根据赞助财产的类型和这些财产的社会角色来表征）视作经验研究中的稳定特征或二分特征。因此，作者概述了不同类型赞助背景的多层次分类法，以说明传统类型的赞助以及新兴主题（例如在线赞助）。然后作者提出了未来研究的议程。

设计/方法/方法

作者对赞助文献进行了全面回顾，以将已建立的赞助类型与新兴主题进行综合，以开发出赞助背景和研究议程的多层次类型。

发现

作者的概念分析揭示了赞助背景的类型，该类型既涵盖体育赞助的一般类型也包括特定类型，公益赞助，文化和社区赞助以及媒体和节目内容赞助。

研究局限/意义

作者的类型为未来的研究提供了一个组织框架，重点是不同的赞助背景。但是，出现的类别仍需要进一步的经验检验。因此，作者提出了一系列问题，以指导对该主题的未来研究。

实际影响

作者的类型学概述了参与赞助商关联营销的组织应考虑的不同赞助背景。

创意/价值

本文提供了赞助背景的多层次分类，将传统类别和新兴类别融合在一起，以更好地为将来关于赞助中情境差异的研究提供信息。