Assessing the effectiveness of sponsorship messaging Measuring the impact of congruence through electroencephalogram

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to represent a pilot study which aims to explore the attention to sponsorship variable by assessing the level of congruence linked to both the sponsor and the sponsored entity (sponsee). Design/methodology/approach - This research performed an experiment involving three different sporting activities where the level of congruence was perceived in a different way according to the different attributes of sponsorship message. Electroencephalograms were employed in order to measure reaction times when recognizing and identifying the level of congruence of sponsorship messages. The rate of successful understanding and identification of these sponsorship messages was also measured with this tool. Findings - Incongruent, misfit messages are processed and encoded with a higher level of attention as opposed to the information which is reliable and consistent with prior expectations (congruent pairings). This means that subjects find fit, congruent messages more difficult to identify; in this case the information is poorly encoded and often misunderstood. In relation to attention congruity, this research found no differences across the different sporting activities which were examined. Practical implications - This research proves that neuroscientific methods can be useful to assess the performance of sponsorship as an alternative to traditional techniques. In addition, this research contributes to the existing debate in the literature regarding the disagreeing results on the actual effectiveness of sponsoring congruent perceived events involving congruent perceived sports teams. Originality/value - This paper is pioneering in the measurement of sponsorship performance through the use of electroencephalograms. Also, the level of attention is considered as a performance indicator.