The Effect of Brand Identification on Brand Evangelism Football Teams in Social Media: With the Mediating Role of Brand Loyalty

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of brand identification on brand evangelism football teams in social media with the role of mediator brand loyalty. The participants were physical education student in State and Azad universities in Mashhad. 300 individuals were randomly selected as the sample. For the purposes of this study was used Self-brand connection questionnaire of Escalas and Bettman (2003), Brand community identification questionnaire of Algesheimer et al   (2005), Brand organizational identification questionnaire of Mael & ashforth  (1992), brand loyalty questionnaire of Kim et al (2001) , and Finally, the positive advertising, desire to harm and were measured with items adapted from Grégoire and Fisher (2006). Sport management experts confirmed its face and content validity, which was established by factor analysis. The reliability of all questionnaires were above of e 0.81 by using Cronbach's alpha. To analyse the data, descriptive and inferential statistics including correlation coefficients and confirmatory factor analysis using SPSS 20 and AMOS 22 software were used. The results showed that there is a correlation between the 6 variables. Self-brand connection, Brand organizational identification and Brand community identification were direct effected on brand loyalty and indirect effected on positive advertising and desire to harm in social media. Thus, it is concluded that social identity perspective, when used in Self-brand connection, Brand organizational identification and Brand community identification, can be useful in predicting the brand loyalty mechanisms, Strengthen the team, gain positive advertising and prevent the spread of false rumors against the team in social media.