Evaluating Social Marketing Elements in Sponsorship

Organizations of all types increasingly recognize the importance of sponsorship as a source of revenue and as a means to achieve their objectives. This trend is driving the broader adoption of sponsorship, which has resulted in its use to pursue objectives other than those related to promotion, including those related to behavior change and, thus, social marketing. Concurrently, sponsors and sponsees are demanding the development of legitimate, reliable, and meaningful methods for the evaluation of sponsorship as investment in the area increases. For organizations whose objectives include behavior change and, thus seek to market behaviors (i.e., social marketers) this results in a need to be able to evaluate the social marketing elements of their sponsorships, distinct from other objectives that may be sought. The current research conceptualizes social marketing in sponsorship and then develops hypothetical examples for each resulting scenario to demonstrate how social marketing elements in sponsorship should be evaluated.