The Influence of Marketing Communication Strategies on Fandom Development in Tanzania: A Case of Selected Premier League Football Clubs

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to investigate the influence of marketing communication strategies on fandom development in Tanzania: A case of selected premier league football clubs. The study specifically assessed the influence of advertising on club’s fandom development; explored the influence of social media on club’s fandom development; and to assess the influence of corporate social responsibility on club’s fandom development in Tanzania. The targeted population was 910 fans whereby from this population sample size of 185 fans was drawn.  The research employed descriptive research design where mixed research approach was applied. Simple random sampling was used to select fans of Simba SC and Mbeya City FC while purposive sampling technique was used to select clubs’ leaders. The findings revealed that advertising strategy, the use of social media and involvement in corporate social responsibility have a great influence in football clubs’ fandom development in Tanzania. The adjusted R2 of the regression output was equals to 0.667 implying that the model explains about 66.7% variations in the clubs’ fandom development. Therefore, advertising strategy, social media and corporate social responsibility were significant predictors of clubs’ fandom development in Tanzania premier league football clubs. Therefore, the study concludes that marketing communication strategy is of vital in influencing fandom development in football clubs. The study recommends that for a club to expand its fandom, its marketing communication strategy should be set in such a way that it can easily be accessed by the majority of the public. Its contents and mode of delivering should be touching the majority of the public. Clubs are required to innovate and intensify the use of effective and efficient marketing communication strategies in promoting clubs’ brand to the public.