Loyalty Typologies and Consumer Choice Factors in the Online Sports-Betting Industry: An Explorative Study into the Italian Regulated Market

Abstract

The paper analyses the loyalty typologies and consumer choice factors in the regulated online sports-betting industry. From the methodological viewpoint an empirical investigation has been carried out through the administration of a questionnaire towards customers who make sports bets on online gambling sites in the Italian regulated market. We have found that, in keeping with consumers’ behaviour “regularities” which normally characterize frequently purchased consumer goods markets, the number of customers who are exclusively loyal to one gambling website is rather limited and that, therefore, online bettors mostly adopt a “multi-brand” buying behaviour. In the markets in which this behaviour pattern emerges, customer loyalty programs appear less efficacious in increasing market penetration of the companies with respect to the firms’ decisions on marketing mix-inputs that influence consumer choice of purchasing. The empirical investigation has therefore permitted us to single out the factors that influence the decision to bet at one online gambling site over another, and to show how the importance of these factors varies in relation to the different degree of the gamblers loyalty. The results are then applied to marketing strategies of the online gambling operators.