The Impact of Consumer Regulatory Focus on the Sport-event Sponsorship Effect

In order to solve the contradiction in the event sponsorship,this paper studies the moderating effect of customer regulatory focus between event sponsorship and brand equity.Two experiments show that 1)regulatory focus could moderate the relative impact of game quality and sponsorship fit;2)for promotion focused consumer,path coefficient between sponsorship fit and brand equity is significantly greater than that of game quality;3)for prevention focused consumer,path coefficient between game quality and brand equity is greater than that of sponsorship fit,but it is not significant;4)sponsorship attitude and position clarity have mediation effect between sponsorship and brand equity;5)regulatory focus moderates the impact of sponsorship on sponsorship attitude and position clarity,but not moderates the impact of sponsorship attitude and position clarity on brand equity.Manipulating sponsorship fit by different sponsorship form or by different brand,manipulating regulatory focus by situational focus or by chronic focus,the experiments show consistent results.