The practice whereby a non-official sponsor brand attempts to “ambush” an official sponsor’s rights continues to threaten sporting events. A key motivator of the ensuing regulatory response is grounded in the ambiguity that ambush marketing generates, namely, by obscuring public awareness of the legitimate sponsor. However, the cognitive processes underpinning sponsorship identification have only recently been investigated empirically. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of ambush advertising on sponsorship memory.

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