The sponsoring of mega-events enables organizations to capitalize on the power of sport to stimulate passionate brand identifications among attendees. However, a critical issue that has not been addressed by scholars is whether the effects of sponsoring mega-events such as the Olympics by a foreign brand will resemble the equivalent sponsorship by a domestic counterpart. In particular, few scholars have investigated attendee perceptions of congruities between event sponsor and self-sponsor brand favorability emanating from an overseas country with where there are longstanding tensions and from home. This study investigated attendees at the 2014 Summer Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China, a city with a long history of patriotic nationalism directed against Japan. The researchers identify that self-domestic sponsor congruity mediates the impact of patriotism among domestic attendees on their favorability toward domestic brands. Self-foreign sponsor congruity moderates the impact of event liking on favorability, even in the case of sponsors from a country with hostile connotations. The study has managerial implications for targeting and localization strategies by sponsor brands both domestic and overseas. It is proposed that foreign brand sponsors of mega-events should pursue local brand adaption through the incorporation local narratives with which residents can identify.

Marketing researchers agree that use innovativeness leads to variety-seeking behavior in service usage in service contexts. As fitness consumers are high-frequency users, user behavior can be enriched by exploring the moderating effect of self-efficacy. This study explores the moderating effect of self-efficacy on the relationship between fitness use innovativeness and usage patterns (usage variety and usage frequency), and investigates their mediation effects on satisfaction and revisit intention. A sample of 234 participants from one of the largest public fitness centers was employed to test the conceptual framework. The findings show that fitness use innovativeness has a positive relationship with usage variety but has no effect on usage frequency. However, self-efficacy demonstrated its moderation effects on the relationships between fitness use innovativeness and usage variety and usage frequency. The evidence of the moderation effect of self-efficacy conforms to the theory of the use-diffusion model. We finally developed a matrix of fitness innovators to illustrate related managerial implications for each segment.

Extant research has confirmed the importance of consumer innovativeness toward innovation adoption, but relatively little is known about the relationship between fitness use innovativeness, post-adoption behavior and the moderating role of fitness consumer’s efficacy belief. This study aims to examine the moderating role of other-efficacy on the relationships between the fitness player’s usage patterns (usage variety and usage frequency) under the influence of use innovativeness, and revisit intention within the context of fitness services. This study utilizes the diffusion model for conceptual development. The proposed hypotheses are empirically tested using fitness players from a public sports center. There were 205 valid questionnaires obtained for quantitative data analysis. The findings confirm that the fitness player’s use innovativeness has a direct impact on usage variety and usage frequency, while the player’s training partner efficacy positively moderates the usage patterns and revisit intention. Based on the extent of fitness use innovativeness and training partner efficacy, we categorize fitness customers into four segments. The managerial implications for each segment are then discussed.