MASTER’S THESIS

Master thesis: sport spectator preferences
ical processes of the individual as organism and output buying decision as reactions
or consequences (Rewerts, 2009, p. 28).
“In brief, various environmental and consumer inputs (products, resources) are
processed by an intervening response system (cognition-affect-behavior) that
generates output consequences which, when appraised against criteria, result in
a learning feedback loop. Individual differences, search activity, type of involvement,
and task definition affect the criteria by which output consequences are
evaluated.” (Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982).
Researchers distinguish psychological processes between activating and cognitive
factors (Jacoby, 2002, p. 51; Meffert, 1986, pp. 144-147). These activation
processes can be seen as control pedal for consumer behavior. There are two
activating processes:
1. Consumer input variables: Emotion, Motivation and attitudes (Rewerts, 2009,
p. 28).
2. Environmental input variables: products, stimulus properties, communication
content (Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982).
The activation processes drive the individual consumer directly to specific manners
or influence the cognitive processes. Important cognitive processes for buying
decisions are perception, learning and memory (Kotler et al., 2009, pp. 239-
243; Kroeber-Riel & Weinberg, 2003, pp. 49, 53; Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982).
The examination of consumer behavior of sport spectators is a complex and interdisciplinary
research field. The approach can differ from several perspectives
on consumer behavior. There are behaviorists’ perspective, the information
processing perspective, the emotional perspective, the cultural perspective (Kotler
et al., 2009 pp. 243-246).
“One cannot reduce the explanation of human behavior to any narrowly circumscribed
and simplistic model, whether that model be behaviorist or psychoanalytic,
ethological or anthropomorphic, cognitive or motivational: the behavior of
people in general and of consumers in particular is the fascinating and endlessly
complex result of a multifaceted interaction between organism and environment”
(Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982).
This master thesis tries to hold a multi-perspective, open approach for judo sport
spectator, focusing the described consumer input variables and distinguished as
activating processes emotion and motivation and the cognitive processes percep-
Introduction page 4