Identifying and prioritizing the areas and activities of social marketing in Iran professional football clubs
Oral Presentation XML
Paper ID : 1726-11THCONF
Authors
1Kharazmi university
2Associate Professor, Kharazmi University of Tehran
3عضو هیات علمی گروه مدیریت ورزشی دانشگاه تربیت مدرس
Abstract
Introduction: How does changing sport fans' behavior help solve the social issues? To penetrate the fans’ minds and find the reasons in their behavior, the sports club marketing managers should study the fan behavior issues. Andreasen (1998) introduces this management role as one of the roles for the social marketing managers. Kotler (2002) believes that the social marketing uses the principles and techniques of marketing to influence a group to accept, reject or leave a behavior to provide the benefits to individuals, groups or the entire community. Because of not having a general agreement on the concept, social marketing interventions in the professional football clubs is difficult. If a professional football club be interested in social marketing processes and interventions, what areas and activities should be focused on by the club managers?
Methodology: This article was a fundamental method research and had two parts. First, the areas and activities of sport social marketing were identified using systematic review. Then, a structured questionnaire was made of identified areas and activities in terms of AHP. The questionnaires were replied by 18 experts. The Expert Choice software was used to prioritize the identified areas and activities.
Results: Twenty one activities in terms of three areas were identified. The three identified areas included health, sociocultural factors and environment respectively. In health area, three important activities consisted of the community health, active lifestyle and healthy nutrition knowledge respectively. In sociocultural area, three important activities included developing the culture of sport for all, strengthening the foundation of the family and reduction of the discrimination respectively. In environment area, three activities contained promoting the culture of saving in consumption, encouraging other organizations to do their active environmental role and recommendations for eco-friendly behavior respectively.
Discussion: Based on the results, health is the most important area to conduct a social marketing interventions in Iranian professional football clubs. The clubs should consider the sociocultural and environment areas too. Developing the culture of sport for all and promoting the culture of saving in consumption are the most prominent activities of the two areas above. The results is consistent with the research background emphasizing health issues. For example, Pity and Pity (2008) found the importance of saving. They showed that the social marketing interventions increase the culture of saving in consumption. Finally, we suggest the football clubs to consider these activities to improve the social marketing interventions.
Keywords
Subjects