Providing a model for developing football team's brand loyalty of pro league in IRAN by applying SEM

The aim of the current study was to provide a model for development of Teams'' brand loyalty among fans of football premier league in Iran، based on literature review. The study was a descriptive-survey research and a practical one. Research population involved the fans of football teams that were famous for having eager fans in football premier league in Iran in season of 1390-91. Based on a pilot study a sample of (n=382) was found to be proper for this study، and finally 420 questionnaire were distributed among fans who were selected through purposive available sampling، that among them، 409 questionnaires were found to be valid and measurable. The research tool was adapted from Gladen and Funk (2001) Atittudinal Loyalty، Fink et al (2003) Behavioral loyalty، Ahearn et al (2005) Identity attractiveness، Mael and Ashforth (2003) Fan-team identification، and Koo (2009) Team identity questionnaires. The questionnaire composed of 5 parts as well as demographic part، that totally involved 34 items. Questionnaire''s face validity was investigated according to 15 sport and marketing scholars’ comments، and questionnaire''s content validity was found to be 0/79. The questionnaire''s total reliability was also found to be %86 according to Choronbach’s alpha. SPSS18 and PLS were used for data analysis. According to research findings the dimensions of Team identity had no positive and significant effect on Identity attraction; Identity attraction had a positive and significant effect on Fan-team identification (? = 0/695); Fan-team identification had a positive and significant effect on Attitudinal loyalty (? = 0/655); and finally Attitudinal loyalty had a positive and significant effect on Behavioral loyalty (? = 0/727).