Bibliometric Analysis of The Global Trends on Sport Marketing Researches

Due to increasing popularity of marketing among sport managers and it's usage in sport, this topic has attracted the attention of scholars. In this regard reviews play an important role in conceptualization of this field. In spite of their valuable insight but they might be affected by author’s way of thinking. Also, they are usually focused on special segment in the whole field unable to show the comprehensive image. But quantitative studies have repetitive process showing higher reliability and enable scholars to present the whole field, offering a comprehensive perspective. Accordingly bibliometric review is a quantitative study showing the development of the field as integrating with mapping software creating network based on intellectual, conceptual and social structure. As there is a lack in the literature in terms of bibliometric study of sport marketing, the objective of the current study is conducting bibliometric review on research undertakings in sport marketing enabling exhaustive understanding of its trend. The current article as a descriptive study considered all articles since beginning, till the end of 2021 as statistical population. In order to find appropriate articles, the literature examined and related keywords were identified. In addition, some criteria for inclusion and exclusion of articles were determined. Accordingly, for the inclusion criteria, web of science database was chosen to retrieve data, since it’s advantage is the higher reliability because of. more complicated reviewing process of articles. Next, for the temporal limitation, the starting point was set to include all related papers till end of 2021 to cover a full year. To exclude irrelevant papers out of analysis, exclusion criteria were applied and for the first step only articles and reviews entered in the analysis. As the second step, articles limited to only English language to be aligned with purpose of the study investigating the international trend of sport marketing researches. Ultimately, the last filter was applied and papers with irrelevant content were all removed since some contain searched keywords but unrelated content. Ultimately 1537 papers became qualified to enter analysis and then all of their bibliography data retrieved out of them and saved. Finally, to illustrate data and intended analysis including Co-citation and Keywords Co-occurrence, VOS viewer was used and the relationships and networks were visualized. Descriptive data indicated that based on WOS database, the quantitative trend of published papers is on the rise particularly since 2015, although fluctuated in some years. The year 2020 witnessed the highest number of papers with 175. This trend decreased in 2021 probably as a result of coronavirus and depression in sport activities. The highly cited paper in this field is "Determinants of sports sponsorship response" written by Speed et al (2000) with 481 citations, clarifying the sponsorship in sport. Among the most productive journals in sport marketing the” international journal of sports marketing and sponsorship was leading with 110 articles. Similarly O'reilly ranked first among the most productive authors with 22 articles contributing to this field. Moreover among the most productive universities contributing to sport marketing, The “State University system of Florida” is on the top of the list. As many of the leading universities belong to United States and it was the pioneer of a sport marketing research, so this country has the highest number of papers with 630 consisting 40/99 percent of all papers. As mentioned earlier, co-citation analysis can illustrate the intellectual structure or in the other words, theories and underlying thoughts. Accordingly, Co citation analysis conducted about sport marketing. Based on this analysis four clusters were appeared: the red cluster (the first one) contains studies related to the sponsorship and topics such brand image, sponsored events etc. The green cluster (the second one) mostly includes topics around consumer behavior such as motivation, identification and others related to fans and consumers. The blue cluster (the third one), has close connection and relationship with the green cluster and in relation with those topics, it includes things like brand loyalty, brand associations and also relationship marketing about sport teams. The yellow cluster (the forth one), encompasses studies mainly in relation with service marketing theory and topics such as satisfaction, brand image, behavioral intentions. Keywords Co[1]occurrence also used to envisage the conceptual structure and show research streams via investigating the most used keywords in sport marketing. Therefore the most repeated words are as following: Sport marketing, Sponsorship, Marketing, Sport, Social media, Advertisement, Branding, Consumer behavior, Sport tourism and Customer loyalty. It actually shows the popular topics among scholars in this field highlighting specially the importance of sponsorship in this field and it’s role in sport marketing. In addition this analysis confirms the findings of Co-citation analysis. Keywords Co-occurrence analysis based on temporal trend illustrates the conceptual evolution and maturity of the topic through showing keywords from the past (purple) to present (yellow) and indicates the research gaps interesting for scholars. Respectively, the analysis displays that primarily, highly repeated keywords were the ones such as promotion, marketing mix, attitude, brand loyalty and etc, indicating the dominant thought among scholars which was goods dominant logic. In this case, sport businesses and teams are producers of athletic services and goods and fans and consumers just consume the experience provided and staged by businesses or teams. Actually in this traditional thinking, fans are only passive consumers of goods and services of sport and the role of consumers as a co creator of value is ignored. But along with the evolution in marketing, sport marketing also undergone some changes since the emergence of service dominant logic caused a shift in way of thinking. Accordingly, not only participation of consumers as the co creator of value is recognized but also it is believed that all stakeholders and actors must get involved in that. Keywords such as service dominant logic and engagement are implying this shift. Therefore, based on findings, it is suggested that scholars should consider this new perspective in their studies and also consequent research gaps in the literature highlighting the role of all stakeholders in particular customers, especially in online context as growing more and more.