Determination of the brand equity of the provincial, regional and national rugby teams of South Africa

Abstract

In essence, aspects of sports marketing can be viewed as a special case of marketing a brand. The brand-related marketing activities of rugby teams should therefore first focus on building awareness of the rugby team's brand. Branding is a new phenomenon in rugby, a sport that has recently become professional and commercialised in South Africa. Despite the importance of brands and consumer perceptions of brands, rugby unions in South Africa have not used a consistent definition or measurement technique to assess spectators' perceptions of rugby brands. If some understanding of spectators' perceptions of brands could be developed, rugby unions in South Africa might be able to determine the brand equity of their sports teams. The determination of brand equity defines what an organisation may be willing to invest in a brand, based on some type of expected return.

Brand equity is a set of variables linked to a brand's name and symbol that adds to or subtracts from the value provided by a product or service to a organisation and/or that organisation's customers and can be grouped into four categories, namely brand awareness, brand associations, brand loyalty and perceived quality. By ascertaining spectators' awareness, the associations they make regarding the brands, as well as brand loyalty and perceived quality of the respective brands of the provincial, regional and national rugby teams of South Africa, the brand equity of these teams could be determined.

The aim of this study was, therefore, to determine spectators' awareness of, their associations with, their loyalty to and their perceived quality of the respective brands of the provincial, regional and national rugby teams of South Africa so that the brand equity of these teams could be established. In this study it was found that the Stormers' brand had the highest brand awareness, but that the Springbok brand had the highest brand equity.