Consumer motivations to participate in event-marketing strategies

As part of the Adidas goes street-campaign, the Adidas Predator Cup was a fun-soccer tournament designed to "reconnect the youth in Germany with Adidas and the soccer sport by enjoying the pure fun, freedom and personal happiness of playing an informal soccer match with friends". Despite knowing that the Adidas Predator Cup was designed to communicate the same commercial messages they would have actively avoided otherwise, the young target audience participated in large numbers in this event-marketing strategy. The current study investigates why young consumers are motivated in such large numbers to experience the hyperreality of the Adidas soccer brand by feeling for an afternoon like being Ronaldinho, Beckham, Ballack or Keane. Using Wohlfeil and Whelan's conceptual model, four predispositional involvement dimensions are identified as motivational drivers and tested, before interesting results are discussed.