Write Critical analysis of the artical by: introduction, summary ,Analysis,Conclusion ? Online and mobile marketing strategies as drivers of brand love in sports teams Findings from Real Madrid Verónica Baena Facultad de Ciencas Sociales y de la Comunicación, Universidad Europea de Madrid, Madrid, Spain 2 Abstract Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of online and mobile marketing as drivers of brand love. Design/methodology/approach - Data were collected through an online survey during early 2013. A total of 241 valid answered questiornaires were collected and the constructs were tested for unidimensionality by using principal components analysis. Findings - This work confirms that in spite of the fact that players are relevant assets and investments, sports managers need to concentrate their efforts on managing the team's brand, as this is one of the company's most important assets. Moreover, the present paper shows that developing an interactive website is not enough to get brand love. In particular, findings reveal that traditional websites are no longer motivating customers to return to the site. As a result, sports managers meed to use interactive marketing mediums to connect with consumers in real time. In addition, by integrating different elements of social media such as blogs, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter professional brands and impact fan engagement teams elevate presence and create virtual communities, which influence the choice Practical implications - As the Real Madrid driver of brand love, marketers should consider this strategy with caution. Originality/value This work could also be of help for sport man marketing as a way to interact with their followers Keywords Sports marketing, Online marketing, Strategic marketing, Brand lov branded mobile application was not found to be a agers considering mobile e, Mobile marketing Keywords Sports marketing, Online marketing, Strategic marketing, Brand love, Mobile marketing Paper type Research paper Executive summary The purpose of this study is to provide a better understanding of the effect that active online and mobile marketing may have on brand love toward sports brands. Prior sports literature has conducted single case studies to analyze Manchester United as an example of network orchestration, David Beckham as a brand, or the brand elements and local inspiration of FIFA World Cup, among others. However, to the author's knowledge, no one has analyzed of the drivers of brand love in sports marketing. To achieve this goal, the case of Real Madrid football team is analyzed, as is one of the most successful further clubs in the world. Since it was founded in 1902, Real Madrid has won 32 national league trophids in "Laliga," 19 "Copas del Rey" (as the national cup in Spain is called), ten European Championship titles, and two UEFA SuperCup trophies. In addition, the club was awarded with the recognition of FIFA Club of the twentieth century on December 23, 2000. It also received the FIFA Order of Merit in 2004. It is also due to this exceptional number of titles that FIFA named Real Madrid imited "FIFA Club of the Century" in 2002. Moreover, Real Madrid is one of the most valuable brands in the sports sector and has the largest number of followers in social networks. The club is also calculated to have over 200 million supporters worldwide. Concerning the methodology, data were collected through an online survey, created and administered during early 2013. A total of 241 valid answered questionnaires were collected. Before the OLS regression analysis, the constructs were tested for unidimensionality by using principal components analysis. Results show the positive and statistically significant relationship between active online marketing with brand love. The effect of mobile phone marketing strategies on brand popularity was also tested. However, contrary to expectations, a negative relation between active mobile marketing and brand love was found. While players are relevant assets and investments for clubs, sports managers need to concentrate their efforts on managing the team's brand, as this is one of the company's most important assets. The present paper reveals that online marketing, enables companies to enhance customer engagement with the brand and therefore achieve brand love across geographical boundaries. This is very relevant as most sports teams focus on international branding to build a global fan base In short, the present paper explores the effect of both online and mobile marketing strategies on brand love. For sports marketers working in highly competitive business environments where customer relationships, retention, and loyalty are paramount, our findings can aid in the elaboration of an efficient marketing mix in a global market arketing academics can also profit from this model which examines the relationship between online and mobile marketing strategies and their effect on the construct of brand love in a sports business environment. Customer brand love may thus facilitate insights into, and help to better explain and/or predict such loyalty outcomes, as explored in this paper. Furthermore, this work provides readers with an overview of the current state of brand love in sports marketing, which could help researchers interested in gaining further insight into this topic. Introduction Managers need to concentrate their efforts on the company's brand as profile builder for corporations (Balmer et al, 2006) and one of the firm's most important assets (Kaynak et al, 2008). Furthermore, brand management, if executed in a proper and continuous way is able to enhance the company's value (Jensen and Beckmann, 2009). Nevertheless, literature has only recently placed increased emphasis on the concept of corporate branding (Jensen and Beckmann, 2009) and especially, in understanding the role played by brands in creating customer engagement Patwardhan and Balasubramanian, 2011). That is, although for decades researchers have studied how consumers form "like-dislike" attitudes toward brands, only in the past few years has there evolved a burgeoning interest in consumer "love" for brands (Batra et al, 2012) Shimp and Madden (1988) were the first authors to introduce the construct of love in marketing. Later, Ahuvia (1993, 2005) thoroughly studied the concept of love applied to various object categories (places, ideas, pets, consumption objects, etc.). More recently, Carroll and Ahuvia (2006) aimed at measuring the feeling of love a consumer might hold for a brand and defined brand love as the degree of passionate emotional attachment a consumer has for a particular trade name. In line with the above arguments, love toward a brand has been shown to be highly similar to interpersonal love (Albert et al, 2009), which clearly differs from the traditional concept of brand loyalty discussed by Aaker (1991, 1996),. Therefore, brand love is considered a higher order construct including multiple cognitions, emotions, and behaviors, which consumers organize into a mental prototype (Bergkvist and Bech-Larsen, 2010). These include, but go beyond, brand attachment and self-brand connection (Batra et al, 2012) Furthermore, brand love has been found to be positively linked to desirable post purchase behaviors among satisfied customers (Carroll and Ahuvia The above discussion is especially relevant in the sports sector, as it has become increasingly commercialized and internationalized over the past decades (Braunstein and Ross, 2010). Specifically, the global sports market for ongoing events (regular sports events or leagues that take place annually or more frequently) is expected to rise t a compound annual growth rate of almost 5 percent between 2011 and 2015 reaching over $144 billion (PwC, 2012). Moreover, sport is becoming increasingly commercialized, and sport entities have become more professional over the years (Bauer et al., 2005). In effect, sport clubs have turned into corporations in which their brand and players are among their most important assets and investments. As a result, ticket revenue while once the number one source of income for clubs has experienced a relative decline in comparison with other sources of income such as merchandising, broadcasting rights, and season combined tickets (Kaynak et al, 2008) Another important fact is the extent of the popularity of professional soccer which characterized by a fan base who dedicates their time and efforts to support their team. That is, current consumers of sports "brands" (i.e. supporters) have uniquely ose brand relationships with their favorite clubs (Jones, 1997). Moreover, the high level of identification that supporters have with their clubs makes them more sensitive to the over-commercialization of something with which they have a unique emotional bond. Nevertheless, to date, most literature within the field of sports branding has been limited to the area of brand equity or brand extensions, and little arch has examined the relationship between supporters' emotional attachment (Abosag et al., 2012) In an attempt to shed light on this topic, the present study analyzes whether the online and mobile marketing strategy implemented by sport teams may have an impact on the "love" supporters profess toward the brand. This analysis has been conducted by focussing on the case of Real Madrid, as it is one of the most successful sports clubs in the world in terms of worldwide supporters (over 200 million people). In addition, Real Madrid has recently usurped Manchester United's long-held title as the most valuable soccer team in the world. Particularly, the season 2012/2013 marks the first time since Forbes began tracking the value of soccer teams in 2004 that Manchester United has not ranked first. In short, Real Madrid is worth $3.3 billion, more than any team in the world. A fact that is especially notable in a period of crisis in Europe Moreover, prior sports literature has conducted single case studies to analyze Manchester United as an example of network orchestration (Shaw, 2007), David Beckham as a brand (Vincent et al, 2009), as well as the brand elements and local inspiration of FIF A World Cup (Weszka, 2011). However, to the author's knowledge, no one has analyzed the drivers of brand love in sports marketing. In an attempt to contribute to the literature, the present study empirically explores the effect that active online and mobile marketing may have on the brand love felt by the Real Madrid fans toward the club. These will be our contributions. The remainder of this study is organized as follows. The next section reviews the background literature and develops the hypotheses. The following section explains the methodology and describes the results. Lastly, the implications of these findings are examined from a practitioner and research perspective, the main limitations of the study are discussed and recommendations for further avenues of research are proposed. Literature review and hypotheses development In recent years professional sports clubs have started to adopt a market orientation as opposed to the traditional management point of view where team performance was the primary focus (Shilbury et al, 2009). In particular, strategic brand management has become a key issue in the last decade (Blumrodt et al, 2012). This may be true in part due to the fact that when customers are affectively committed to a company, they identify themselves with the firm's vision and values, and in turn, they are interested in the growth of the firm (Patwardhan and Balasubramanian, 2011). Accordingly, branding can be considered one of the most important mechanism for sports organizations to achieve growth, as supporters always stick to the brand From reading newspaper articles, magazines, or books about the team and players to watching television broadcasts and listening to radio commentaries to get the latest stars and updates, sports fans are continually involved with their team and players (Phua, 2010). However, over the past decade, the internet has been gaining in importance over more traditional media because of the numerous advantages it offers, including its capacity to transcend both temporal and geographical constraints (Walker et al, 2011). These advantages enable sport teams to take advantage of fan attachment by creating interactive web spaces, extending team experiences, building far engagement, and solidifying the team's brand (loakimidis, 2010) In accordance with the above arguments, the literature highlights the role of a company's brand community as having the power to influence the strength of the relationship between community participants and the firm's brand (Hur et al, 2011) Interaction among members, which may help the brand's supporters to feel like active participants instead of common spectators (Sicilia and Palazón, 2008), may also build and promote consumer-brand relations. This is particularly important in the sports sector, as the club's fans are also their customers. That is, clubs renew their stadiums transfer star players, hire the best coaches, and product merchandising products In order to achieve brand love, sports marketers have to consider what benefits the team could provide to their fans. For instance, marketing strategies such as finely tuned communications through a variety of media (e-mail, mail, and special "limited access" events) are able to boost and reinforce the degree to which committed consumers feel they are receiving special treatment, and are truly part of a teanm (Kaynak et al, 2008). This aspect is very relevant for every organization since the cost of retaining customers is substantially lower than that of acquiring new ones (Kaynak et al, 2008). Moreover, innovative media has enabled marketing to be more interactive (Cooke and Buckley, 2008), which helps professional sports to attract new followers and collect fan feedback through Facebook or Twitter, among others (Ratten and Ratten, 2011). In fact, sports is one of the sectors of activity that most uses interactive marketing mediums to communicate with their followers in real time. The clubs' sites become a meeting point where members develop their relationships inside an environment where the brand is always present (Sicilia and Palazón, 2008) Literature has suggested that traditional mass media (i.e. television, radio newspaper, and billboards) does not greatly effect fan identification. Moreover, none of messages sent by the club via traditional media are customized or tailored for each individual receptor based on the supporters' needs, wants, or behaviors. In contrast, online media provides a virtual home for fans to increase their "perceived" connection to the team and to other fans. It also offers fans the opportunity to express personal ideas and experience a greater sense of belonging to a community (loakimidis, 2010) while continually engaging with their team and players (Phua, 2010) Online marketing while not new, is adapting to the times in which consumers desire to be a part of the marketing process (Pronschinske et al, 2012). Therefore, as online marketing allows adaptation to fan patterns and preferences, which significantly affects the firm's brand (Dou and Krisnamurthy, 2007), the following hypothesis is presented: H1. Active online marketing activities aiming at reducing the distance between the fan and the club are positively associated with brand love. Literature has emphasized the importance of building a strong brand for sport organizations looking to enhance their competitive positioning in the marketplace (Hur et al, 2011). In essence, most sport marketers have realized the need to adopt marketing strategies to contact supporters and interact with them in a way that is no longer restricted to geographic co-presence of members (loakimidis, 2010). In this sense, the role of cell phones, iPads and iPhones has to be highlighted as they have enabled people to watch sport games interactively. Moreover, cell phone penetration is vast across both the developed and developing nations and is projected to exceed 100 percent by 2017 across all regions excluding Africa (which will reach 97 percent) as discussed in GSMA (2013) lobile marketing is typically thought of as a promotional message delivered to a person on a mobile device via channels such as SMS or the mobile web by or on behalf of a marketer (Wais and Clemons, 2008). In particular, before Apple introduced the iPh marketing tools. But with the rise of smartphones internet access also changed. In in 2007, only SMS notification services (or similar) were possible mobile a recent study showed that 61 percent people in developed countries usually access the Mobile marketing is typically thought of as a promotional message delivered to a person on a mobile device via channels such as SMS or the mobile web by or on behalf of a marketer (Wais and Clemons, 2008). In particular, before Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, only SMS notification services (or similar) were possible mobile marketing tools. But with the rise of smartphones internet access also changed. In fact a recent study showed that 61 percent people in developed countries usually access the internet through a mobile device (Accenture, 2012). This highlights the importance of mobile marketing as interaction takes place through a technological interface, so physical context is not necessary (Sicilia and Palazón, 2008). Therefore, recent literature started to emphasize a different view of marketing communication: mobile social and optimized to be passed on among them (Phua, 2010) around (Okazaki et al, 200 has marketing, in which promotional messages are not just sent to people but are designed Mobile marketing has amassed tremendous interest from marketers as the internet obile device has become one of the most promising communication media 7). In particular, the cell phone is emerging as a uniquely werful platform for a wide range of communication and information access applications, thus making it a highly valuable marketing medium. This is because th mobile device is personal, always connected, and capable of providing location based information (Wais and Clemons, 2008). Therefore, in spite of the fact that mobile commercial messages have been found to cause certain resistance and even resentment among consumers, potentially damaging the sender's brand rather than enhancing it; mobile marketing may allow sports marketers to engage fans in the excitement and erv f the entire team sports season (Phua, 2010) Specifically, in order to obtain customer engagement, every sport team needs to attract their supporters' attention and increase fan response. This matches the characteristics of the mobile phone: a highly portable communication device with ubiquitous data transmission capability (Okazaki et al, 2007). In addition, through mobile marketing fans can log on to the internet by using their phones, send and receive text messages, and use sport apps to keep up with the latest stats and stories about their favorite team (Phua, 2010). These types of actions could not be executed through traditional mass media. In short, mobile marketing offers new opportunities for sports marketers as it gives the customers a sense of proximity and confidence about the brand. This in turn may cause supporters to be more inclined to perceive that they are sending and receiving messages between friends, which happen to be promotional in nature, instead of being subjected to unwelcome advertisements. Furthermore, there is a lot of information known about each mobile subscriber that can be used in targeting and customizing the team's marketing strategy toward their fans (Wais and Clemons, 2008). For these reasons we posit that that mobile marketing offers new opportunities for sports marketers to achieve brand love as it may help supporters to feel a sense of proximity and confidence about the brand (Phua, 2010). Therefore, based on the above discussion we propose the following: H2. Mobile marketing activities aiming at reducing the distance between the fan and the club are positively associated to brand love. Methodology Eligibility of Real Madrid From a sp orting perspective Real Madrid is one of the most successful further clubs in the world. Since it was founded in 1902, Real Madrid has won 32 national league trophies in LaLiga," 19 "Copas del Rey" (as the national cup in Spain is called), ten European Championship titles, and two UEFA SuperCup trophies. In addition, the club was awarded with the recognition of FIFA Club of the twentieth century on December 23 2000. It also received the FIFA Order of Merit in 2004. Furthermore, Real Madrid is allowed to wear a multiple-winner badge on their jersey during UEFA Champions League matches as they have won more than five European Cups. It is also due to this exceptional number of titles that FIFA named Real Madrid "FIFA Club of the Century" in 2002 Moreover, Real Madrid has realized the importance of the brand and grasped the ability to market in a way not seen anywhere else in the world of soccer. More specifically, Real Madrid is represented in the most important social media platforms as Facebook, Twitter, or Google+. With nearly 50 million followers throughout the different channels, Real Madrid is among the top three teams of the world in terms of followers and engagement in social media as published in 2013 Top Forbes' Social Media Rankings. Also, Real Madrid has nearly 13 million Twitter followers (level September 1, 2014) and over 74 million fans on Facebook (level September 1, 2014) The combination of the aforementioned factors made Real Madrid the appropriate and marketing Data collection brand to choose for this study, representing a leading organization in sports, business, Data were collected through an online survey created and administered on the free survey platform: surveyexpression.com. It is worth mentioning that online data collection was utilized on its merit of being a cost effective method when attempting to reach a large-scale sample in a wide geographic region (Bauer et al, 2005). Furthermore, it was assumed that people navigating on social media platforms and the internet would be most likely to be reached through an online survey. To check validity, the questionnaire was pre-tested by using a small sample (three scholars from the author's institution). This process resulted in some minor changes in wording. The final version of the questionnaire was available online during February 2013, while respondents did not receive any incentive for completing the survey, they did receive a thank-you message for their participation. Participation was solicited among undergraduate students of the author's university via an e-mail which provided a direct link to the survey and which stated the academic nature of the research. Snowball sampling was used to obtain additional participants hereby a link to the online survey was e-mailed to students who were invited to forward it to their contacts. This produced a total of 241 completed questionnaires from participants across Europe, America, Africa, and Asia. As shown in Figure 1, most of respondents were European. It is also worth mentioning that most participants were aged between 16 and 25 years (78 percent) resulting in a mean age of 22 years In the study of Carroll and Ahuvia (2006) respondents were first asked to name a brand they are satisfied with. This example was followed, and as the present survey was based on the Real Madrid brand, respondents had to first state if they would consider themselves Real Madrid fans. Only those people who affirmatively identified themselves as fans of Real Madrid were invited to complete the survey. As all of the questions were configured as mandatory in order to move on to the next question, the problem of missing values was not an issue in this study Measurement of variables Carroll and Ahuvia's (2006) concept of brand love was combined and adapted to spor In particular, in the brand construct the word "brand" was replaced by the word "clu to clarify the context for the respondents. It was measured through a Likert-type sca consisting of the five points from strongly disagree to strongly agree, as showni following list of ten items showing dependent variable operationalization (adapted fror Caroll and Ahuvia, 2006): (1) this is a wonderful cltub: (2) this club makes me feel good; (3) this club is totally awesome; (4) I have neutral feelings about this club; (5) this club makes me very happy; (6) I love this club; (7 I have no particular feelings about this club; (8) this club is pure delight; (9) I am passionate about this club; and (10) I'm very attached to this club. Concerning the independent variables of this work, the survey was split into different categories, representing the different channels of online and mobile marketing. The first channel was the official website of Real Madrid. Second, for social media marketing the chosen platforms were Facebook and Twitter, representing over 80 percent of the documents shared about Real Madrid in social networks (Netbreeze, 2013). Accordingly, to measure the Facebook construct, the item "How often do you share posts of Real Madrid on your wall?" was added to the operationalization proposed in Bergkvist and Bech-Larsen's (2010) study, as it represents a common habit on the social media platform. A similar item was - added to the Twitter construct, just replacing the word "share" by "retweet, as shown in Table I. This table also shows the items used to assess the mobile marketing construct. Data analysis With the principal component analysis, the items of the different variables were simplified into single values. Second, an OLS regression analysis was conducted to calculate the results, as discussed in the next section. Website - four items, four points each To what extent do you follow news about Real Madrid on the website? How often do you visit the Real Madrid website?b How often do you talk about the Real Madrid website to others?b Would you be interested in buying merchandise with the Real Madrid name on it through the website?b Facebook - five items, four To what extent do you follow news about Real Madrid on Facebook? points each How often do you visit the Real Madrid Facebook page?b How often do you talk about the Real Madrid Facebook page to others? How often do you share posts of the Real Madrid Facebook page on your wall? Would you be interested in buying merchandise with the Real Madrid name on it through Facebook To what extent do you follow news about Real Madrid through How often do you visit the Real Madrid Twitter profile? How often do you talk about the Real Madrid Twitter profile to others?b How often do you "retweet" posts of the Real Madrid Twitter profile? Would you be interested in buying merchandise with the Real Madrid name on it through Twitter?b Do you use the Real Madrid SMS/MMS notification service? Do you have the Real Madrid app "MyMadrid"? How often do you use the "MyMadrid" app? How often do you talk about the "MyMadrid" app to others?b How often did you recommend the "MyMadrid" app to others? Would you be interested in buying merchandise with the Real Madrid name on it through the "MyMadrid" app?b Do you use any of the following Real Madrid apps? lwitter! Twitter- five items, four points each Mobile six items Notes: Answer scale: 1 - not at all, 2- slightly, 3-quite, 4-extremely Answer scale: 1 never, 2 - sometimes, usually, 4 -always, eAnswer choice: 1 yes, 2-no: dAnswer scale: 1- never, 2 = sometimes, 3 usually, 4 = daily, "Answer sale: 1-0, 2-1, 3 1-10, 4 positively 10: f Answer scale: 1 =Journey to Real Madrid, 2= Real Madrid Starscup, 3= Real Madrid Fanatasy Manager 3 -Real Madrid Talking Players, 5-none tion Source: Adapted from Bergkvist and Bech Larsen (2010) Results Before the OLS regression analysis, the constructs were tested for unidimensionality by using principal components analysis. Cronbach's α values were all higher than 08 thus confirming the survey's reliability. As shown in Table II, the proposed model is significant at the 0.012. This suggests that, collectively, the variables tested in this study help to explain the drivers of brand love. The collinearity statistics (Variance Inflation Factor and Tolerance) for all the variables used in the empirical analysis are also provided. None is significant, suggesting that collinearity was not a problem in the analysis. Our findings also reveal a positive and statistically significant association between active online marketing (Facebook and Twitter) with brand love, which confirm H1 at the 0.05 level. Results also show a significant, although negative, association between mobile marketing Mobile) and brand love at the 0.05 level We were unable to transcribe this imageConclusiorn Recent decades have witnessed and unprecedented research interest on brand (Ismail and Spinelli, 2012). To shed light on this topic, the present paper shows that developing an interactive website is not enough to get brand love. In particular, our findings reveal that traditional websites are no longer motivating customers to return to the site (Sicilia and Palazón, 2008). As a result, sports managers need to use interactive marketing mediums to connect with consumers in real time, in order to be more interactive and socially complex (Cooke and Buckley, 2008). In addition, by integrating different elements of social media such as blogs, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, companies elevate presence, and create virtual communities (Ratten and Ratten, 2011), which influence the choice of brands and impact fan engagement. Interaction among members may also influence the choice of brands and enhance the company's brand love (Phua, 2010). Therefore, since customer participation often leads to customer engagement, online marketing should be considered as a tool to improve marketing effectiveness. This finding is consistent with recent research (Sicilia and Palazón, 2008; Hur et al., 2011; Patwardhan and Balasubramanian, 2011; Ratten and Ratten, 2011) Furthermore, this work could also be of help for sport managers considering mobile marketing as a way to interact with their followers. However, as the Real Madrid branded mobile application was not found to be a driver of brand love, marketers should consider this strategy with caution In sum, today's soccer industry is characterized by the difficulty of obtaining better growing revenues derived from traditional business streams such as ticket sales. Faced ith this situation sport teams should design marketing strategies aimed at increasing engagement in order to achieve brand love (Abosag et al, 2012, Pronschinske et al, 2012) That is, consumers are the supreme authority of teams. In particular, highly involved and yal fans are more likely to watch the sport brand live or via media, buy more merchandise, and evaluate sponsors of sports brands more positively (Lings and Owen, 2007; Filo et al, 2010). Hence, getting consumers more involved with and increasing their ward the sport brand can lead to increased income for the team (Kunkel et al, 2013) Limitations and further research agenda A first limitation of this study is its focus on a single industry: the sports business, more exactly the European soccer market. However, the Real Madrid club represents a leading football entity in this market and thus offers an exemplary model. It should however, be noted that the digital environment is constantly changing and new marketing trends can emerge quickly and might be considered in further studies. Second, results of the research have been obtained by an online survey method. Similar to the other online surveys, the sample in this study includes only those people who were willing to answer the questions in the survey and this causes limitation Another limitation of the study is the sampling method. Due to the difficulty of reaching all of the population subject to the research (Real Madrid's fans), a Online an mobi marketing strategies convenience sampling method (university students) has been chosen. With regard to further investigation, due to the fact that our results found a negative relationship between active mobile marketing and brand love, additional examination could offer a good opportunity for academics to engage in further research. In addition, the scope of this research is supporters of Real Madrid football team. Supporters of different teams and sport categories (baseball, basketball, etc.) could be chosen and comparative studies might be carried out. Also, empirical testing and validation of the proposed customer brand love conceptualization and its interrelationships with other marketing constructs are encouraged for further advancements to be made in this area 215 Overall, more work is necessary in this area, both conceptually and empirically Indeed, we hope our findings contribute to the development of a robust research agenda. Online and mobile marketing strategies as drivers of brand love in sports teams Findings from Real Madrid Verónica Baena Facultad de Ciencas Sociales y de la Comunicación, Universidad Europea de Madrid, Madrid, Spain 2 Abstract Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of online and mobile marketing as drivers of brand love. Design/methodology/approach - Data were collected through an online survey during early 2013. A total of 241 valid answered questiornaires were collected and the constructs were tested for unidimensionality by using principal components analysis. Findings - This work confirms that in spite of the fact that players are relevant assets and investments, sports managers need to concentrate their efforts on managing the team's brand, as this is one of the company's most important assets. Moreover, the present paper shows that developing an interactive website is not enough to get brand love. In particular, findings reveal that traditional websites are no longer motivating customers to return to the site. As a result, sports managers meed to use interactive marketing mediums to connect with consumers in real time. In addition, by integrating different elements of social media such as blogs, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter professional brands and impact fan engagement teams elevate presence and create virtual communities, which influence the choice Practical implications - As the Real Madrid driver of brand love, marketers should consider this strategy with caution. Originality/value This work could also be of help for sport man marketing as a way to interact with their followers Keywords Sports marketing, Online marketing, Strategic marketing, Brand lov branded mobile application was not found to be a agers considering mobile e, Mobile marketing Keywords Sports marketing, Online marketing, Strategic marketing, Brand love, Mobile marketing Paper type Research paper Executive summary The purpose of this study is to provide a better understanding of the effect that active online and mobile marketing may have on brand love toward sports brands. Prior sports literature has conducted single case studies to analyze Manchester United as an example of network orchestration, David Beckham as a brand, or the brand elements and local inspiration of FIFA World Cup, among others. However, to the author's knowledge, no one has analyzed of the drivers of brand love in sports marketing. To achieve this goal, the case of Real Madrid football team is analyzed, as is one of the most successful further clubs in the world. Since it was founded in 1902, Real Madrid has won 32 national league trophids in "Laliga," 19 "Copas del Rey" (as the national cup in Spain is called), ten European Championship titles, and two UEFA SuperCup trophies. In addition, the club was awarded with the recognition of FIFA Club of the twentieth century on December 23, 2000. It also received the FIFA Order of Merit in 2004. It is also due to this exceptional number of titles that FIFA named Real Madrid imited "FIFA Club of the Century" in 2002. Moreover, Real Madrid is one of the most valuable brands in the sports sector and has the largest number of followers in social networks. The club is also calculated to have over 200 million supporters worldwide. Concerning the methodology, data were collected through an online survey, created and administered during early 2013. A total of 241 valid answered questionnaires were collected. Before the OLS regression analysis, the constructs were tested for unidimensionality by using principal components analysis. Results show the positive and statistically significant relationship between active online marketing with brand love. The effect of mobile phone marketing strategies on brand popularity was also tested. However, contrary to expectations, a negative relation between active mobile marketing and brand love was found. While players are relevant assets and investments for clubs, sports managers need to concentrate their efforts on managing the team's brand, as this is one of the company's most important assets. The present paper reveals that online marketing, enables companies to enhance customer engagement with the brand and therefore achieve brand love across geographical boundaries. This is very relevant as most sports teams focus on international branding to build a global fan base In short, the present paper explores the effect of both online and mobile marketing strategies on brand love. For sports marketers working in highly competitive business environments where customer relationships, retention, and loyalty are paramount, our findings can aid in the elaboration of an efficient marketing mix in a global market arketing academics can also profit from this model which examines the relationship between online and mobile marketing strategies and their effect on the construct of brand love in a sports business environment. Customer brand love may thus facilitate insights into, and help to better explain and/or predict such loyalty outcomes, as explored in this paper. Furthermore, this work provides readers with an overview of the current state of brand love in sports marketing, which could help researchers interested in gaining further insight into this topic. Introduction Managers need to concentrate their efforts on the company's brand as profile builder for corporations (Balmer et al, 2006) and one of the firm's most important assets (Kaynak et al, 2008). Furthermore, brand management, if executed in a proper and continuous way is able to enhance the company's value (Jensen and Beckmann, 2009). Nevertheless, literature has only recently placed increased emphasis on the concept of corporate branding (Jensen and Beckmann, 2009) and especially, in understanding the role played by brands in creating customer engagement Patwardhan and Balasubramanian, 2011). That is, although for decades researchers have studied how consumers form "like-dislike" attitudes toward brands, only in the past few years has there evolved a burgeoning interest in consumer "love" for brands (Batra et al, 2012) Shimp and Madden (1988) were the first authors to introduce the construct of love in marketing. Later, Ahuvia (1993, 2005) thoroughly studied the concept of love applied to various object categories (places, ideas, pets, consumption objects, etc.). More recently, Carroll and Ahuvia (2006) aimed at measuring the feeling of love a consumer might hold for a brand and defined brand love as the degree of passionate emotional attachment a consumer has for a particular trade name. In line with the above arguments, love toward a brand has been shown to be highly similar to interpersonal love (Albert et al, 2009), which clearly differs from the traditional concept of brand loyalty discussed by Aaker (1991, 1996),. Therefore, brand love is considered a higher order construct including multiple cognitions, emotions, and behaviors, which consumers organize into a mental prototype (Bergkvist and Bech-Larsen, 2010). These include, but go beyond, brand attachment and self-brand connection (Batra et al, 2012) Furthermore, brand love has been found to be positively linked to desirable post purchase behaviors among satisfied customers (Carroll and Ahuvia The above discussion is especially relevant in the sports sector, as it has become increasingly commercialized and internationalized over the past decades (Braunstein and Ross, 2010). Specifically, the global sports market for ongoing events (regular sports events or leagues that take place annually or more frequently) is expected to rise t a compound annual growth rate of almost 5 percent between 2011 and 2015 reaching over $144 billion (PwC, 2012). Moreover, sport is becoming increasingly commercialized, and sport entities have become more professional over the years (Bauer et al., 2005). In effect, sport clubs have turned into corporations in which their brand and players are among their most important assets and investments. As a result, ticket revenue while once the number one source of income for clubs has experienced a relative decline in comparison with other sources of income such as merchandising, broadcasting rights, and season combined tickets (Kaynak et al, 2008) Another important fact is the extent of the popularity of professional soccer which characterized by a fan base who dedicates their time and efforts to support their team. That is, current consumers of sports "brands" (i.e. supporters) have uniquely ose brand relationships with their favorite clubs (Jones, 1997). Moreover, the high level of identification that supporters have with their clubs makes them more sensitive to the over-commercialization of something with which they have a unique emotional bond. Nevertheless, to date, most literature within the field of sports branding has been limited to the area of brand equity or brand extensions, and little arch has examined the relationship between supporters' emotional attachment (Abosag et al., 2012) In an attempt to shed light on this topic, the present study analyzes whether the online and mobile marketing strategy implemented by sport teams may have an impact on the "love" supporters profess toward the brand. This analysis has been conducted by focussing on the case of Real Madrid, as it is one of the most successful sports clubs in the world in terms of worldwide supporters (over 200 million people). In addition, Real Madrid has recently usurped Manchester United's long-held title as the most valuable soccer team in the world. Particularly, the season 2012/2013 marks the first time since Forbes began tracking the value of soccer teams in 2004 that Manchester United has not ranked first. In short, Real Madrid is worth $3.3 billion, more than any team in the world. A fact that is especially notable in a period of crisis in Europe Moreover, prior sports literature has conducted single case studies to analyze Manchester United as an example of network orchestration (Shaw, 2007), David Beckham as a brand (Vincent et al, 2009), as well as the brand elements and local inspiration of FIF A World Cup (Weszka, 2011). However, to the author's knowledge, no one has analyzed the drivers of brand love in sports marketing. In an attempt to contribute to the literature, the present study empirically explores the effect that active online and mobile marketing may have on the brand love felt by the Real Madrid fans toward the club. These will be our contributions. The remainder of this study is organized as follows. The next section reviews the background literature and develops the hypotheses. The following section explains the methodology and describes the results. Lastly, the implications of these findings are examined from a practitioner and research perspective, the main limitations of the study are discussed and recommendations for further avenues of research are proposed. Literature review and hypotheses development In recent years professional sports clubs have started to adopt a market orientation as opposed to the traditional management point of view where team performance was the primary focus (Shilbury et al, 2009). In particular, strategic brand management has become a key issue in the last decade (Blumrodt et al, 2012). This may be true in part due to the fact that when customers are affectively committed to a company, they identify themselves with the firm's vision and values, and in turn, they are interested in the growth of the firm (Patwardhan and Balasubramanian, 2011). Accordingly, branding can be considered one of the most important mechanism for sports organizations to achieve growth, as supporters always stick to the brand From reading newspaper articles, magazines, or books about the team and players to watching television broadcasts and listening to radio commentaries to get the latest stars and updates, sports fans are continually involved with their team and players (Phua, 2010). However, over the past decade, the internet has been gaining in importance over more traditional media because of the numerous advantages it offers, including its capacity to transcend both temporal and geographical constraints (Walker et al, 2011). These advantages enable sport teams to take advantage of fan attachment by creating interactive web spaces, extending team experiences, building far engagement, and solidifying the team's brand (loakimidis, 2010) In accordance with the above arguments, the literature highlights the role of a company's brand community as having the power to influence the strength of the relationship between community participants and the firm's brand (Hur et al, 2011) Interaction among members, which may help the brand's supporters to feel like active participants instead of common spectators (Sicilia and Palazón, 2008), may also build and promote consumer-brand relations. This is particularly important in the sports sector, as the club's fans are also their customers. That is, clubs renew their stadiums transfer star players, hire the best coaches, and product merchandising products In order to achieve brand love, sports marketers have to consider what benefits the team could provide to their fans. For instance, marketing strategies such as finely tuned communications through a variety of media (e-mail, mail, and special "limited access" events) are able to boost and reinforce the degree to which committed consumers feel they are receiving special treatment, and are truly part of a teanm (Kaynak et al, 2008). This aspect is very relevant for every organization since the cost of retaining customers is substantially lower than that of acquiring new ones (Kaynak et al, 2008). Moreover, innovative media has enabled marketing to be more interactive (Cooke and Buckley, 2008), which helps professional sports to attract new followers and collect fan feedback through Facebook or Twitter, among others (Ratten and Ratten, 2011). In fact, sports is one of the sectors of activity that most uses interactive marketing mediums to communicate with their followers in real time. The clubs' sites become a meeting point where members develop their relationships inside an environment where the brand is always present (Sicilia and Palazón, 2008) Literature has suggested that traditional mass media (i.e. television, radio newspaper, and billboards) does not greatly effect fan identification. Moreover, none of messages sent by the club via traditional media are customized or tailored for each individual receptor based on the supporters' needs, wants, or behaviors. In contrast, online media provides a virtual home for fans to increase their "perceived" connection to the team and to other fans. It also offers fans the opportunity to express personal ideas and experience a greater sense of belonging to a community (loakimidis, 2010) while continually engaging with their team and players (Phua, 2010) Online marketing while not new, is adapting to the times in which consumers desire to be a part of the marketing process (Pronschinske et al, 2012). Therefore, as online marketing allows adaptation to fan patterns and preferences, which significantly affects the firm's brand (Dou and Krisnamurthy, 2007), the following hypothesis is presented: H1. Active online marketing activities aiming at reducing the distance between the fan and the club are positively associated with brand love. Literature has emphasized the importance of building a strong brand for sport organizations looking to enhance their competitive positioning in the marketplace (Hur et al, 2011). In essence, most sport marketers have realized the need to adopt marketing strategies to contact supporters and interact with them in a way that is no longer restricted to geographic co-presence of members (loakimidis, 2010). In this sense, the role of cell phones, iPads and iPhones has to be highlighted as they have enabled people to watch sport games interactively. Moreover, cell phone penetration is vast across both the developed and developing nations and is projected to exceed 100 percent by 2017 across all regions excluding Africa (which will reach 97 percent) as discussed in GSMA (2013) lobile marketing is typically thought of as a promotional message delivered to a person on a mobile device via channels such as SMS or the mobile web by or on behalf of a marketer (Wais and Clemons, 2008). In particular, before Apple introduced the iPh marketing tools. But with the rise of smartphones internet access also changed. In in 2007, only SMS notification services (or similar) were possible mobile a recent study showed that 61 percent people in developed countries usually access the Mobile marketing is typically thought of as a promotional message delivered to a person on a mobile device via channels such as SMS or the mobile web by or on behalf of a marketer (Wais and Clemons, 2008). In particular, before Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, only SMS notification services (or similar) were possible mobile marketing tools. But with the rise of smartphones internet access also changed. In fact a recent study showed that 61 percent people in developed countries usually access the internet through a mobile device (Accenture, 2012). This highlights the importance of mobile marketing as interaction takes place through a technological interface, so physical context is not necessary (Sicilia and Palazón, 2008). Therefore, recent literature started to emphasize a different view of marketing communication: mobile social and optimized to be passed on among them (Phua, 2010) around (Okazaki et al, 200 has marketing, in which promotional messages are not just sent to people but are designed Mobile marketing has amassed tremendous interest from marketers as the internet obile device has become one of the most promising communication media 7). In particular, the cell phone is emerging as a uniquely werful platform for a wide range of communication and information access applications, thus making it a highly valuable marketing medium. This is because th mobile device is personal, always connected, and capable of providing location based information (Wais and Clemons, 2008). Therefore, in spite of the fact that mobile commercial messages have been found to cause certain resistance and even resentment among consumers, potentially damaging the sender's brand rather than enhancing it; mobile marketing may allow sports marketers to engage fans in the excitement and erv f the entire team sports season (Phua, 2010) Specifically, in order to obtain customer engagement, every sport team needs to attract their supporters' attention and increase fan response. This matches the characteristics of the mobile phone: a highly portable communication device with ubiquitous data transmission capability (Okazaki et al, 2007). In addition, through mobile marketing fans can log on to the internet by using their phones, send and receive text messages, and use sport apps to keep up with the latest stats and stories about their favorite team (Phua, 2010). These types of actions could not be executed through traditional mass media. In short, mobile marketing offers new opportunities for sports marketers as it gives the customers a sense of proximity and confidence about the brand. This in turn may cause supporters to be more inclined to perceive that they are sending and receiving messages between friends, which happen to be promotional in nature, instead of being subjected to unwelcome advertisements. Furthermore, there is a lot of information known about each mobile subscriber that can be used in targeting and customizing the team's marketing strategy toward their fans (Wais and Clemons, 2008). For these reasons we posit that that mobile marketing offers new opportunities for sports marketers to achieve brand love as it may help supporters to feel a sense of proximity and confidence about the brand (Phua, 2010). Therefore, based on the above discussion we propose the following: H2. Mobile marketing activities aiming at reducing the distance between the fan and the club are positively associated to brand love. Methodology Eligibility of Real Madrid From a sp orting perspective Real Madrid is one of the most successful further clubs in the world. Since it was founded in 1902, Real Madrid has won 32 national league trophies in LaLiga," 19 "Copas del Rey" (as the national cup in Spain is called), ten European Championship titles, and two UEFA SuperCup trophies. In addition, the club was awarded with the recognition of FIFA Club of the twentieth century on December 23 2000. It also received the FIFA Order of Merit in 2004. Furthermore, Real Madrid is allowed to wear a multiple-winner badge on their jersey during UEFA Champions League matches as they have won more than five European Cups. It is also due to this exceptional number of titles that FIFA named Real Madrid "FIFA Club of the Century" in 2002 Moreover, Real Madrid has realized the importance of the brand and grasped the ability to market in a way not seen anywhere else in the world of soccer. More specifically, Real Madrid is represented in the most important social media platforms as Facebook, Twitter, or Google+. With nearly 50 million followers throughout the different channels, Real Madrid is among the top three teams of the world in terms of followers and engagement in social media as published in 2013 Top Forbes' Social Media Rankings. Also, Real Madrid has nearly 13 million Twitter followers (level September 1, 2014) and over 74 million fans on Facebook (level September 1, 2014) The combination of the aforementioned factors made Real Madrid the appropriate and marketing Data collection brand to choose for this study, representing a leading organization in sports, business, Data were collected through an online survey created and administered on the free survey platform: surveyexpression.com. It is worth mentioning that online data collection was utilized on its merit of being a cost effective method when attempting to reach a large-scale sample in a wide geographic region (Bauer et al, 2005). Furthermore, it was assumed that people navigating on social media platforms and the internet would be most likely to be reached through an online survey. To check validity, the questionnaire was pre-tested by using a small sample (three scholars from the author's institution). This process resulted in some minor changes in wording. The final version of the questionnaire was available online during February 2013, while respondents did not receive any incentive for completing the survey, they did receive a thank-you message for their participation. Participation was solicited among undergraduate students of the author's university via an e-mail which provided a direct link to the survey and which stated the academic nature of the research. Snowball sampling was used to obtain additional participants hereby a link to the online survey was e-mailed to students who were invited to forward it to their contacts. This produced a total of 241 completed questionnaires from participants across Europe, America, Africa, and Asia. As shown in Figure 1, most of respondents were European. It is also worth mentioning that most participants were aged between 16 and 25 years (78 percent) resulting in a mean age of 22 years In the study of Carroll and Ahuvia (2006) respondents were first asked to name a brand they are satisfied with. This example was followed, and as the present survey was based on the Real Madrid brand, respondents had to first state if they would consider themselves Real Madrid fans. Only those people who affirmatively identified themselves as fans of Real Madrid were invited to complete the survey. As all of the questions were configured as mandatory in order to move on to the next question, the problem of missing values was not an issue in this study Measurement of variables Carroll and Ahuvia's (2006) concept of brand love was combined and adapted to spor In particular, in the brand construct the word "brand" was replaced by the word "clu to clarify the context for the respondents. It was measured through a Likert-type sca consisting of the five points from strongly disagree to strongly agree, as showni following list of ten items showing dependent variable operationalization (adapted fror Caroll and Ahuvia, 2006): (1) this is a wonderful cltub: (2) this club makes me feel good; (3) this club is totally awesome; (4) I have neutral feelings about this club; (5) this club makes me very happy; (6) I love this club; (7 I have no particular feelings about this club; (8) this club is pure delight; (9) I am passionate about this club; and (10) I'm very attached to this club. Concerning the independent variables of this work, the survey was split into different categories, representing the different channels of online and mobile marketing. The first channel was the official website of Real Madrid. Second, for social media marketing the chosen platforms were Facebook and Twitter, representing over 80 percent of the documents shared about Real Madrid in social networks (Netbreeze, 2013). Accordingly, to measure the Facebook construct, the item "How often do you share posts of Real Madrid on your wall?" was added to the operationalization proposed in Bergkvist and Bech-Larsen's (2010) study, as it represents a common habit on the social media platform. A similar item was - added to the Twitter construct, just replacing the word "share" by "retweet, as shown in Table I. This table also shows the items used to assess the mobile marketing construct. Data analysis With the principal component analysis, the items of the different variables were simplified into single values. Second, an OLS regression analysis was conducted to calculate the results, as discussed in the next section. Website - four items, four points each To what extent do you follow news about Real Madrid on the website? How often d