The Relationship between Value Dimension of Relational Marketing and Loyalty to Sporting Brand in National Team Players

This study aimed at investigating the relationship between value dimension of relational marketing and loyalty to sporting brand in the players of national racquet teams from two behavioral and perceptional respects. The present study was considered as an applied study with respect to its aim and descriptivecorrelation study with respect to data collection. A questionnaire including 34close items was used to collect data. The face validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by professors and its reliability was confirmed by Cronbach’s alpha (α=92%). The statistical population of this study included all players of national team and super league (men and women) in racquet fields including badminton, ping pong, tennis, and squash. In this study, simple randomsampling method was used. The dependent variable in the perceptional model of the study was behavioral and perceptional loyalty, and the variables of symbolic value, operating value, experimental value and the realized price were initially assessed as independent variables. In this regard, to assess the effect of variables, regression was used. Next step was to investigate the relationship of the variables of gender, age, income, commitment to brand and diversity withvalue dimensions of relational marketing and loyalty. To assess the relationship of variables, Spearman correlation coefficient was used. According to the results of the study, the variables of operating, symbolic and experimental values and the realized price influenced behavioral and perceptional loyalty. But only the variables of age and diversity did not have any significant relationship with value dimensions of relational marketing and loyalty.