Previous research on the sports marketing of global brands has focused mainly on the sponsorship of sporting events and the endorsement of products by athletes. This study reveals the unexamined effect of the impact of sports stars’ personal brand on global brand equity and consumers’ brand love. Based on global consumer culture (GCC) theory and self-expansion theory, this paper examines the influence of sports celebrities’ personal brand on consumers’ perceptions of global brand equity and brand love. Using survey data from 372 users of “HUPU”, our results revealed that the use of sports stars’ personal brand (attractiveness, expertise, and congruence) was positively related to global brand equity and brand love. Belief in global brand citizenship has a full mediating effect between attractiveness and brand love but a partial mediating effect between expertise, congruence and brand love. Product quality partially mediates the relationship between expertise and brand love. These findings suggest that it is appropriate to use sports stars’ personal brand to build global brand equity and increase consumers’ brand love.

Introduction

With the acceleration of globalization, enterprises invest marketing efforts to build a global brand image and a shared global consumer culture across the world (Akaka and Alden, 2010). The celebrity endorsement strategy has been widely adopted to promote corporate image, which is intended to improve the effects of advertising based on customers’ association of the brand with a sports star’s high reputation (Malik and Guptha, 2014). Due to sports stars’ special expertise, wide recognition and charisma, they have become a preferred choice to serve as spokespeople and are particularly pursued by sports brand enterprises (Yu, 2005). Previous research on sports marketing has focused mainly on the sponsorship of sporting events (Johar and Pham, 1999) and the endorsement of products by athletes (Yu, 2005). However, academic research on the effect of the impact of sports stars’ personal brand on global brand equity and consumers’ brand love is still in its infancy. With the emergence of the digital age and the globalization of sports and given the pervasiveness and cultural impacts of new media, the personal brand effect of sports stars transcends national boundaries, and these stars may become known worldwide (Santomier, 2008). “Global athletes” are becoming prominent in helping build sports brands’ image in the international market for several reasons. First, sports marketers employ foreign sports stars as brand spokespeople to reach global sports fans. For instance, McDonald’s hired Yao Ming (Chinese basketball star) as a spokesman to attract Asian fans. Moreover, companies have turned to the world’s top sports stars (such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Kobe Bryant) for product endorsements to capture the attention of consumers across borders.