University students’ perception of the impact of sports sponsorship activities of Tanzanian companies on consumers purchase intentions

Sport sponsorship is used to enable events on the part of organizations and to support marketing, corporate, media and personal objective on sponsor’s part. The sport sponsorship has gained acceptance in Tanzania in recent years. However the benefits of the sponsorship are not well realized, the situation, which has caused sponsoring, companies to be reluctant in giving support. Therefore the study examined how the University students perceived the effect of sports sponsorship in relation to purchase intentions of products and services of the companies The factors considered were belief that a company sponsors sport or sports, brand name, prior use and corporate image. Students from the university of Dar es Salaam main campus and university college of lands and architectural studies where the targeted population. The sample of 300 students was drawn from this population that cut across their gender, courses and years of study. Subjects were asked to rate their intention to purchase products or services from six (6) sponsoring companies. The relationships were analyzed using chi-square and running frequencies. Significant effects were not observed on purchase intention and belief that company sponsor sports and brand name, while for prior use and intention to purchase product from sponsoring company significant relationships were observed. Corporate image exhibited some variation; some companies’ image influence purchase intention while others did not.