Sports-Related Nutrition Marketing and Its Performance Impact on Athletes in the Republic of North Macedonia

Nutrition is increasingly recognized as a key component of opti­mal sporting performance, with both the science and practice of sports nu­trition developing rapidly. The sports nutrition market has witnessed robust growth in the past few years; it is gaining pace due to the increase in health awareness among the population, new product development, the rapid in­crease in urbanization, and growth in a number of sales outlets, health clubs, fitness centers and gyms. Athletes use a range of nutritional and diet strat­egies to improve sports performance. Nutrition plans need to be personal­ized to the individual athlete to take into account the specificity and unique­ness of the event, performance goals, practical challenges, food preferenc­es, and responses to various strategies. A key factor is the related marketing used to reach the core aim of the athletes for specific sports nutrition so they can meet their energy and nutrient requirements, whether that is speed, en­durance, recovery, or strength. The marketing strategies in the sports nutri­tion industry are wide. Companies understand the power of sports endorse­ment, the trending on social media, and after all the factors of advertise­ment, through the different marketing communication channels impacting the athletes’ behavior for the final decision-making process of purchasing the product. In this paper the purpose is to investigate the effect of sport-re­lated nutritional marketing as a communication strategy reaching athletes, and, its second relationship, the effect of the marketed sport-related nutri­tional products impact on athlete’s performance, from the athlete’s aspect. The importance of this paper is to examine a new topic of a connection be­tween sports nutritional marketing and the eventual performance effect on a particular sub-category of athletes because very little research is being conducted on this topic of interest. The research framework used in this pa­per will help to guide future research and improve marketing communica­tion strategies with great insight on what are the key methods to reach out to short and distance athletes from a marketing point of view, as well as the key factors that make marketed sport nutritional products impact on ath­lete’s performance.