THE CORRELATION BETWEEN TEAM’S PERFORMANCE AND CONSUMER-COMPANY IDENTIFICATION: USING RELATIONSHIP QUALITY AS MEDIATOR

Background/ Objectives and Goals There are many professional baseball teams pursue good performance to win consumer-company identification. The baseball organization would love to spend pots of money to acquire great foreign athletes to win games but keep better relationship with the fans. A team with better performance doesn’t mean it has more fans than the others, when the team stops wining, fans will also stop supporting them. Methods Our survey test the correlation between team’s performance and consumer-company identification, and take relationship quality as the mediator. 231 questionnaires were returned and descriptive statistics and regression analysis are used to discuss the correlation between team’s performance and consumer-company identification. Expected Results/ Conclusion/ Contribution According to our research, great team’s performances raise consumer-company identification, and the relationship quality has partial mediation effect. It tells that the baseball organization can’t over-rely on team’s performances; they should also care about the relationship quality with the fans. It makes the fans not just only acknowledge the team’s performances, but also the whole team’s spirit and they’ll be more loyal fans.