The impact of scandal on sport consumption: do different scandal types have different levels of influence on different consumer segments?

Research question: How, and to what extent, do different scandal types influence sport consumption behaviors - measured as intended media viewership - across different consumer profiles? Research methods: A Best-Worst Scaling choice experiment is run on data gathered from consumers who are fans of the Australian Football League and latent class modelling is used to identify consumer profiles. Results and findings: The findings suggest that different scandal types lead to different viewing intention effects on consumers, sexual assault, illicit substance use, doping and organized match fixing are likely to produce the most negative outcomes of the 13 scandal types examined. Five distinct consumer profiles emerge from the results in terms of their relative reactions to a scandal. Implications: Conceptually, the study indicates that consumers respond to different types of scandals and the responses vary by consumer profile. The findings demonstrate that sports managers need to consider a contingency-based approach when managing scandal based on the heterogeneity this study observed across both scandal types and consumer profiles.