Impact of Attitudinal Constructs on Sport Team’s Country Image and Intention to Travel

A positive team image not only constitutes a key asset for businesses but may also play key role in enhancing the fans‟ perceptions of the team‟s country image and their intention to travel to such countries. The present paper aims at measuring the impact of global fans‟ attitudinal constructs such as team attachment, team achievement and team involvement on the team‟s country image and their intention to travel to this country through the indirect impact of the sponsor‟s image. Data collected through an online survey from 710 participants showed that team country image is mainly determined by team achievement and that there is a positive relationship between the sponsor‟s image and team country image. Interestingly, the findings also showed that team achievement impacts team country image through the indirect impact of the sponsor image. The implication of this research is that having positive feelings about the team‟s country image would psychologically raise global fans‟ positive feelings about the image of this team‟s country which would, in turn, evoke the fans‟ interest to travel to this team‟s country.