Ambassadorship in Women and Girls’ Sport: The Case of Basketball in New Zealand

Abstract

Influential individuals carry out vital marketing functions in community sport. This includes relationship building, word-of-mouth promotion and product/service development. There is no framework yet for this. Relationship marketing has a rich tradition in numerous bodies of literature. This research project has demonstrated that it is useful as well in the context of community sport ambassadorship.

Ambassadorship as a marketing phenomenon has been explored in previous research but is novelly conceptualised here in a women and girls community sport context. The conceptual work and subsequent typology was underpinned by 12 interviews with community sport practitioners and sport marketing scholars. This paper also outlines a further 17 interviews with community sport ambassadors undertaken for the purpose of better understanding their motivation and behaviour.

The nature of social media content that ambassadors share was also investigated, followed by an exploration of ambassadorship in sports outside of basketball, with the aim that sport managers should identify and support ambassadors working with women and girls in their sport community. Finally, a study of how girls perceive community sport ambassadors on social media is presented.