How Sporting Events Contribute to Internal Marketing: The Critical Role of Teambuilding – Evidence from Seven Corporate Runs

Abstract

Sporting events and sponsorships have repeatedly been analyzed for their effects on the customer but seldom for their impact on the employees. This paper examines the effects of corporate runs which are company-sponsored amateur road races of a distance of typically 5.6 km They focus rather on the team event than on the success of the individual participant. Corporate runs that originated in the U.S. enjoy popularity in different parts of the world, yet in Germany they have grown to a mass-phenomenon with up to 10% of the regional working population taking part. The largest corporate run worldwide is the J.P. Morgan Chase Run in Frankfurt with participant numbers between 70,000 and 80,000 each year. Based on social identity and equity theory this research examines the internal marketing effects of corporate runs. Specifically, the constructs ‘company support of’ and ‘participant involvement with the event’ are analyzed for their influence on organizational identity and work motivation. The main question of this research is if the effort (in cash kind, manpower, etc.) companies put into such an event is well invested. Tests of the hypotheses are based on a data set gathered from participants of seven different corporate runs in Germany. The cooperating event agencies sent the link to the online-questionnaire via their mailing lists (team captains of the individual companies and newsletter recipients) and received an event satisfaction analysis in return. A total of 1,915 respondents took part in the survey. After clearing missing values, 803 data sets remained for construct validation and structural equation modelling. All constructs yielded one-factor solutions with well over 50%of variance explained and Cronbach alphas around.8 as suggested by Rossiter (2002). Confirmatory factor analysis showed indicator reliabilities larger than.4, composite reliabilities exceeding.6 and AVE values larger than.5. The model fit measures signal a close fit: chi-square/df =2.44, RMSEA =.043, RMR =.026; and GFI, AGFI, RFI, IFI, CFI, NFI and TLI easily met the.9 threshold.