Explanation and analysis of the relationship between brand equity and social responsibility of sports teams: emphasizing the mediating role of social identity

Extensive changes in the business environment have made organizations always look for new ways to gain and improve competitive advantage. One of the important strategic elements in the business activities of many modern organizations is social responsibility. The aim of the current research was to investigate how to build brand equity based on social responsibility measures with the mediation of dual social identity with a multi-group analysis approach.

The current research is applied in terms of purpose and is a descriptive-survey type of research. The statistical population included fans of Esteghlal and Persepolis clubs, and 280 of them participated in this research. The data collection tool was Liu & et al (2019) social responsibility questionnaire, Kim & Manoli's (2020) social identity, and Wang & Tang's (2018) characteristic value. Content and form validity of the questionnaire were confirmed by asking the opinions of sports management professors, construct validity using convergent and divergent validity, and reliability using Cronbach's alpha coefficient and composite reliability. Data analysis was done using descriptive statistics and structural equation model and spss 26 and pls3 software were used for statistical analysis.

In this study, 201 men and 79 women; Esteghlal team participated with 169 fans, Persepolis with 111 fans Structural equation analysis showed that social responsibility has a significant effect on team identity, online identity and brand equity and the mediating role of social identity in relation to social responsibility and special value was also confirmed. In addition, in the findings related to multi-group analysis of Esteghlal and Persepolis teams, except for the social responsibility path with online identity, there was no significant difference between the paths.

According to the findings of the research, it can be concluded that promoting and improving the image of the team's social responsibility in the eyes of the fans is necessary to strengthen the social identity (team identity and online social identity) and promote the special value of the sports brand. The correct attitude of high-level football managers towards social responsibility, followed by the structured and strategic planning of social responsibility and the creation of a social responsibility management system and the allocation of separate budgets for social activities in football will prepare the conditions for social actions by football.