Sponsorships are increasingly gaining importance within the marketing communication mix. The ones that stand out the most among them are sports sponsorships, in which companies invest the largest amounts of money. Sponsorships are important for organizations because they allow them to achieve diverse corporate goals, one of the most important among them is improving the perceived image of the company. A number of theories have been used to study this field. In this dissertation, three of them are presented – the meaning transfer model, the congruity theory and the match-up hypothesis. Based on different emphasis of each of them, they enable accurate insight into the operation of sponsorships and their influence on the image of the company. Research in this area has shown that one of the key factors for achieving effectiveness of sponsorships is the congruity between the entities involved in it, that is, congruity between sponsor, sponsee and consumer. For this reason, the focus of my quantitative research was primarily on studying the impact of congruity between entities in sport sponsorships on the image of the company. The empirical part of the diploma thesis, which is based on the conducted research, showed that congruity of sponsor, sponsee and consumer in sports sponsorships positively influence the image of the sponsor.
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