Role of perceived value and emotions in the satisfaction and future intentions of spectators in sporting events

Abstract

The quality of service offered by sports entities has become a good predictor of user satisfaction and also future intentions. To know the future intentions of customers of any service is a key objective to develop service improvement and retention strategies. This need has also become apparent to professional sports clubs. In this study, the relationship between perceived quality (tangibles, staff, complementary services and outcome quality), perceived value, emotions, satisfaction and future intentions of spectators are analyzed for a sporting event. Consequently, the main objectives proposed in this study were to test a model of causal relationships whereby the perceived value is a function of perceived quality, satisfaction is a consequence of quality, perceived value and emotions, and future intentions are a function of satisfaction and perceived value, and to know the importance of perceived value in predicting future intentions of the spectator. The research was conducted on a basketball club of the Spanish premier league, where 563 spectators were surveyed with a self-administered questionnaire. The original scale used for the analysis of perceived quality consisted of 9 items with an alternative seven-point response and was called Eventqual-R, that is the short version of Eventqual which is used in the regular leagues of professional basketball. Results indicate that perceived value is the best predictor of the satisfaction and future intentions of spectators, while quality and emotions have limited relevance as predictors of spectator satisfaction.