FANTASY SPORTS GAMES BRAND COMMUNITIES: IDENTIFICATION, ENGAGEMENT, CONTINUANCE INTENTION, AND SPONSORS' BRAND EQUITY

This study aims to investigate to what extent does a Fantasy Sports Game (FSG) brand community's members Identification and Engagement influence their Membership Continuance Intention as well as their perception of the brand equity of the FSG's sponsor. The Consumer Culture Theory - CCT (Arnould & Thompson, 2005) was used as the theoretical framework for this study, more specifically situated in the brand community group of CCT studies. The 'Social Influence of Brand Communities' model (Algesheimer, Dholakia, & Herrmann, 2005) was used as the basis for the development of the conceptual model of this study, which focused on the players of Cartola FC, the most important Brazilian football (soccer) FSG. A non-probabilistic judgment sample was collected through a web survey focusing on the Cartola FC's official Facebook fan page members resulting in 3,710 valid responses. The constructs' reliability, as well as their convergent, discriminant and nomological validities were assessed. Structural equation modeling was used to test the substantive hypotheses of this study. Five of the six substantive hypotheses were empirically supported. The results suggest that the sponsor's consumer based brand equity is positively influenced by the brand communities members engagement and membership continuance intention