Building team brand equity through perceived CSR: the mediating role of dual identification

While involvement in CSR activities is common practice in today’s sporting world, there is a need to go beyond the activities themselves to explore how fans’ perceptions of CSR can affect customer-based brand equity and what role online-community and team identification can play in this relationship, which this study aims to explore. Data collected through an online survey of South Korean Samsung Lions baseball club fans (N=331), analysed through structural equation modelling, support the positive influence of perceived CSR on dual identification (team and online-community), and the impact of team identification on brand equity. Interestingly, CSR perception is shown to be an insignificant predictor of brand equity, influenced fully by team identification. This study suggests that promoting a sport team’s socially responsible image is important in terms of building both team and online community identification while developing team identification can be vital in increasing the value of the sport brand.