The Effect of Social Media Marketing on Branding Process and Consumer Behavior of Clubs of Iran Football Premier League

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of social media marketing (SMM) on branding process and consumer behavior based on Psychological Continuum Model (PCM) in the clubs of Iran football premier league. The statistical population consisted of fans of the clubs in Iran football premier league (2017-2018) that had used at least one of the social media of the clubs. The sampling method was stratified and the maximum sample size was determined as 1155. A researcher-made questionnaire was used to collect data. The face and content validity of the questionnaires was confirmed by the professors of marketing and media and its construct validity was verified by exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Using Cronbach's alpha, the reliability coefficients of branding process questionnaires, consumer behavior questionnaire and social media marketing questionnaire were obtained as 0.91, 0.87 and 0.95, respectively. To analyze the data, structural equation modeling was used by LISREL 8.8 software. The results showed that information reliability was the most important component of SMM practices and football club SMM had significant effects on branding process (r=0.67) and consumer behavior (r=0.28). In addition, the results demonstrated that the branding process significantly affected the consumer behavior (r=1.16). The results of this study can be used as fundamental data to integrate social media practices into the marketing strategies of sport brands and also as leverage and competitive advantage to affect fans’ behavior and to establish a deeper bond with the sport clubs.