| Abstract: | The problem of match fixing seriously damaged the development of professional baseball league in Taiwan. Such problem makes many fans didn’t support the professional baseball league anymore. Thus, this study conducted questionnaire survey to detect the relationships between team image, team identity and fans’ purchase intention based on the perspective of Brother ELEPHANTS’s fans after the match fixing. 226 useable responses were collected from 250 distributed questionnaires. Findings of this study are shown as following:
First of all, in terms of Brother ELEPHANTS’s fans, male is slightly more than female. Besides, they mostly own the highest education degree of university, with the occupation as student, have monthly income of NT$10,000, and support the Brother ELEPHANTS for more than 7 years.
Second, based on the perspective of Brother ELEPHANTS’s fans, empirical results of this study revealed that the match fixing of Brother ELEPHANTS results in seriously negative impacts on team image, team identity and fans’ purchase intention.
Third, after the happening of match fixing in Brother ELEPHANTS, visitors who buy the ball game ticket reduced 32% in the next year. Additionally, visitors who went to see the game were not willing to buy other additional products of ball game. Besides, female fans were more willingness to buy other additional products than male fans.
According to the findings mentioned above, this study suggested that Brother ELEPHANTS can participate in none-profit activity, do their best to prevent the problem of match fixing, and design diverse or innovate practices to improve the mutual interactions with their fans. By performing splendid competition and showing sportsman spirit, Brother ELEPHANTS can effectively strengthen fans’ team identity, and finally motivate fans’ intention to buy tickets |
