Management Sciences and Quantitative Methods Commons^™

Leveraging Marketing Resources To Strengthen Stakeholder Company Identification, Mark David Groza

Open Access Dissertations

Channel relationships, market knowledge, strategic partnerships and brand equity are examples of marketing resources which firms can possess. Marketing resources are especially valuable when they are properly leveraged by agents of the firm (Srivastava, Fahey, and Christensen 2001). This dissertation examines how one marketing resource - corporate sponsorships - can be leveraged by companies to enhance financial performance. Based on the tenets of social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1985), two conceptual models are developed which propose corporate sponsorship can develop the attractiveness of a company's identity and thus enhance levels of company identification among salespeople (Study 1) and customers …