The impact of online branding and e-service quality on fan trust and loyalty: A case of Thai soccer club

Abstract

© 2019 Association for Computing Machinery. Digital marketing has gained popularity among the professional sport organisations. The team-sport clubs nowadays have their own online channel to enhance fan trust and loyalty. Despite the large investment in time and resources to drive online branding, research devoted to sport-fan engagement on online channel is still very limited. Thus, this study examines the influence of online channel on brand, e-service quality and image of Thai soccer clubs. A total of 500 questionnaires were collected from a group of soccer fan club of SCG Muangthong United. The respondents had regularly visited the club's website with in a period of consecutive three months; to either get information or watch the football matches online. The findings revealed the positive relationship between brand involvement, brand attitude, e-service quality and online trust of which turned into customer loyalty. Nonetheless, the website image was found to have no congruence influence on online trust in the case of SCG Muangthong United.