Rosier, H. (2018) Marketing football in social media and the digital world. Undergraduate theses, University of Chichester.
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Abstract
Social media has become a dominant and ubiquitous phenomenon in modern society and has a remarkable impact upon the lives of online users. As well as creating close relationships between users and brands, social media offers an entertainment value, presenting users with opportunities to interact and engage with content around real-time events. Due to the profound association between social media and marketing, brands are fixed in a fiercely competitive environment whereby social media must be utilised as a driving force to initiate and transform online promotions. For football clubs, social media serves as a vital communication tool to build relationships with fans, with the rise of viral marketing becoming an attractive prospect to capitalise upon. This study aimed to identify the extent to which marketing was implemented via social media by Chelsea FC around their six 2017/18 Champions’ League group stage games, which can be noted as high traffic periods. A content analysis was conducted to determine the marketing content released across the three-day period of each game; pre-match day, match day and post-match day. This provided eighteen occasions where the material was analysed across four of Chelsea’s online platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. From this, the absolute marketing percentages were calculated respectively for each day and each individual platform. Broadly, the results of this study showed that all four social media platforms were used for marketing purposes. Specifically, Twitter was used the most, predominantly for partnership content, whilst Instagram was used the least. Facebook was identified as being used for a wide range of marketing activities, including external partnerships as well as internal Chelsea related promotions, whereas YouTube was used less frequently in this manner, though when used, it was for events of great importance with Chelsea’s principle partners. Overall, it can be concluded that whilst some platforms are more dominant than others, all four are appropriate for marketing, though each platform’s individual features must be taken into account to determine their effectiveness. Based on the findings, this study can serve as a solid contribution to the limited existing research in this subject area, however, further research concerning the implementation of social media marketing by football clubs is necessary to contribute additional data to this growing phenomenon.
Item Type: | Theses (Undergraduate) |
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Additional Information: | BA (Hons) Sport Business & Management |
Subjects: | G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GV Recreation Leisure > GV557 Sports H Social Sciences > HF Commerce |
Divisions: | Academic Areas > Institute of Sport > Area > Sport Social Sciences Student Research > Undergraduate |
Depositing User: | Ann Jones |
Date Deposited: | 16 Jan 2019 17:08 |
Last Modified: | 16 Jan 2019 17:08 |
URI: | https://eprints.chi.ac.uk/id/eprint/4110 |