Establishing a Strategic View of Sport Events: Marketing a Multiphase Sport Experience

The multiphase leisure experience looks at the experience as a five phase process that includes anticipation, travel to, onsite behavior, travel from, and recollection. This continuum depicts a dynamic experience, one that evolves and matures across the five phases. The purpose of this study is to take this model and apply it to sport events. Understanding sport events as a multiphase experience will require a new way of thinking and new research endeavors. This paper serves the purpose of both increasing the awareness of multiphase sport experiences and providing direction for future research. Sport events will continue to grow in number and the multiphase sport experience research will allow sport organizations an opportunity to provide a better, more satisfying service experience for the sport consumer. It will also allow marketers to evolve their event brands through additional ancillary and secondary service elements. Overall, recognizing an event as a multiphase experience will create a competitive advantage for sport event marketers wishing to develop and/or maintain strong brand equity. This will enable sport managers to strategically outperform competitors and differentiate from the others to stay competitive. 1 Huberty and Ross: Multiphase Sport Experience Published by Digital Commons @ Kent State University Libraries, 2016