Applying the mediating role of differentiation strategy in promoting the business performance of sports clubs

Using a differentiation strategy is one aspect of business success, but to be successful in today's volatile market; you need to consider two other important components: customer knowledge management and customer voice marketing. Therefore, the aim of this study was to apply the mediating role of differentiation strategy in promoting the business performance of sports clubs with an emphasis on sound marketing and customer knowledge management. The method of this research was descriptive-correlational. The statistical population consisted of managers of sports clubs in Rasht, which due to the limited number of statistical population, statistical sample was considered as a whole (N = 75). Research tools include four customer knowledge management questionnaires (3 dimensions, 13 questions), business performance (2 dimensions, 9 questions), Taherparvar et al. (2013), customer voice marketing (5 dimensions, 18 questions) (Naseri et al. (2014)). And the strategy of differentiation (4 dimensions, 11 questions) was Baqerpour et al. (2013).The validity of the instrument was approved by experts (7 persons - content). The software PLS 3 was used to analyze the data and the relationships between the variables. The findings showed that customer knowledge management had a significant effect on customer voice marketing, differentiation strategy and business performance respectively, and customer voice marketing had a significant effect on business differentiation strategy and performance. Also, differentiation strategy has a significant effect on business performance. The findings revealed that the managers of sports clubs in the country are not familiar with concepts such as customer knowledge management and ways to achieve better performance through marketing and customer engagement. Therefore, it is necessary to take action by relevant organs to train marketing methods, especially customer voice marketing and customer knowledge management, and to develop strategies for further differentiation for sports managers and business executives.