The Effect of Service Brand Elements on Loyalty of Football Premier League Fans and An Investigation of the Validity and Reliability of the Questionnaire

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of service brand elements on loyalty of football premier league fans and also the validity and reliability of the questionnaire. The statistical population consisted of the Iran football premier league fans. 384 subjects were selected using the Cochran formula by purposive convenience sampling method. Krystallis and Chrysochou service brand questionnaire (2014) and the brand equity questionnaire of Aaker (1998) were used to collect data. The face and content validity of the questionnaires were confirmed by sport management professors. In order to analyze the data, Cronbach's alpha was used to determine the internal consistency, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to determine the construct validity and structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the model. The findings indicated internal consistency (α=0.92) for the service brand loyalty questionnaire. Regarding the construct validity, based on the amount of relationships and T-value, all items had a significant relationship with the components and were good predictors of their components.  Also, the t-test confirmed the fit of the model. As a result, the internal and external validity of the service brand loyalty model was confirmed. Finally, it can be said that the service brand loyalty questionnaire in sport is a valid and reliable measure which can be used to assess service brand loyalty among fans, and to gain consistent results. It is suggested that sport marketing managers should pay enough attention to the effectiveness of each of these variables in order to increase fans’ loyalty.