Abstract

Customer orientation is essential for long-term success competing between sports organizations in this dynamic business world. Perception of customer behaviour might be essential providing a competitive advantage of sport’s organization. Customer orientation in strategy might increase customers’ loyalty which is important for companies striving for survival and strengthening their competitiveness in the market. Customers’ of sport’s organization might behave differently according to the type of sport and even gender of sport’s team. In this case, customers’ (fans’) behaviour of women’s volleyball is analysed as an important factor in exploring its image. The aim of this article is to perceive the influence of the customers’ behaviour in Lithuanian women’s volleyball to its image. There was done sampling using a questionnaire with women’s volleyball customers. So, we can suggest, that customer loyalty is related to the image of the sport’s organization or team. The results of the research showed that women’s volleyball is not a very popular sports game among Lithuanian people. Besides, according to the findings, the main customers of Lithuanian women’s volleyball are retired professional players of volleyball and their family members. Thus, Lithuanian women’s volleyball image has to be improved and firstly paying attention to customers’ behaviour. Strong and statistically important Pearson correlation of the image of women’s volleyball and public relations (as advertising and sharing information) shows that greater the image of women’s volleyball needs greater attention and investment to public relations. Scientifically research results have a value of specific research of women’s volleyball image in Lithuania. Furthermore, these research results could be applied to the practice of sports management while creating a strategy for the image of women’s volleyball. 

Keywords: customer behaviour, fans, the image of volleyball, management of women’s sport.

JEL Classification: L83, M30, M31.

Cite as: Jeseviciute-Ufartiene, L., & Skackauskiene, I. (2018). Image of women’s volleyball in Lithuania perceiving its customer behaviour. Marketing and Management of Innovations, 4, 179-190. https://doi.org/10.21272/mmi.2018.4-16

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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