Business-to-Business Relationships and Sport: Using Sponsorship as a Critical Sales Event

To date, research on sponsorship in general, and sport sponsorship in particular, has focused on sponsorship effects (Business-to-Consumer) and the managerial uses of sponsorship. This paper addresses a gap in the sport sponsorship literature by examining sport sponsorship from a Business-to-Business (B2B) perspective, and the use of sport sponsorship as a Critical Sales Event to help the B2B sales force move customers through the relationship life cycle stages proposed by Dwyer, Shurr and Oh (1987). The authors propose and discuss a framework for implementing Critical Sales Events into the relationship marketing life cycle using sport sponsorship; discuss how sport sponsorship can impact buyer-seller relations at pertinent stages of the life cycle; and provide recommendations for future research.