Building Brands through Event Sponsorships: Providing On-Site Audiences with a Vivid Brand Experience

Building Brands through Event Sponsorships: Providing On-Site Audiences with a Vivid Brand Experience DISSERTATION der Universität St. Gallen, Hochschule für Wirtschafts-, Rechts- und Sozialwissenschaften (HSG) zur Erlangung der Würde eines Doktors der Wirtschaftswissenschaften vorgelegt von Caspar F. Coppetti von Zürich und Mollis (Glarus) Genehmigt auf Antrag der Herren Prof. Dr. Torsten Tomczak und Prof. Dr. Thomas Bieger Dissertation Nr. 2925 D-Druck Spescha Druck, St. Gallen, 2004 Die Universität St. Gallen, Hochschule für Wirtschafts-, Rechts- und Sozialwissesnnschaften (HSG) gestattet hiermit die Drucklegung der vorliegenden Dissertation, ohne damit zu den darin ausgesprochenen Anschauungen Stellung zu nehmen. St. Gallen, den 14. Juni 2004 Der Rektor: Prof. Dr. Peter Gomez To my family Sarah, Monica, Peter, Marina Thanks for your love. Building Brands through Event Sponsorships – Providing On-Site Audiences with a Vivid Brand Experience i Acknowledgements Writing a dissertation has been likened to climbing a mountain, running an Ironman triathlon, or giving birth to a child. Given my research topic, I would like to use a more salient metaphor. The human mind has the ability to compress time when looking back to things that happened in the past. I will therefore undoubtedly remember the writing of this thesis as an important event in my life – a challenging, yet very exciting one. Thank you for making it happen. I am deeply grateful to my doctoral advisors Prof. Torsten Tomczak and Prof. Thomas Bieger for accompanying me through the learning process that writing this thesis has been for me. In retrospect, I admire Prof. Tomczak’s unmatched capability to steer my thought process in the desired direction by leisurely asking questions that not only touch the core of the issue at hand, but cut straight through it. On a more personal note, I very fondly remember the relaxed, espresso-fuelled mid-morning sessions in Zurich. Prof. Thomas Bieger has supported this thesis with considerably more time and thought than his role of co-advisor would have obliged him to. His valuable comments at the right moment greatly helped the progress of this thesis. Thank you, also, for the impromptu mountain run in the Alpstein. The classroom experiment conducted for this thesis benefited heavily from the input of Prof. Michael Tuan Pham of Columbia University, New York, who generously shared his experience in the field of empirical research on sponsorship with me. A warm thank you also goes to Dr. Silke Mühlmeier for her valuable methodological support in the analysis of the data. This thesis is concerned with some very operational and practical aspects of sponsorship. It therefore benefited heavily from the valuable discussions with practitioners in the field – the people who not only write about sponsorship, but actually make it happen. Some of the people who contributed to this thesis can rightfully be considered to be leading resources on the subject. I would like to thank Eugen Brunner, Jürg Capol, Thomas Fink, Erwin Flury, Dr. Martin Venetz, Catrin Wetzel, and Philipp Wetzel for the very valuable and inspiring discussions we had. I am grateful to David Allemann for a number of things that helped make this thesis what is. First, for introducing me to the branding world altogether, second for being a great sparring partner, always inspiring me to think deeper, and third for keeping me ... - tailieumienphi.vn