It is important that brands and corporations should maintain continuity and integrity in their communication with their target groups. This continuity and integrity is one of the most important elements that enable them to survive effectively in the market. Today, it has been observed that many brands and corporations benefit from a wide variety of sponsorship activities which enable them to communicate with their target groups. Sponsorship activities are investments that brands and corporations have made for a wide range of applications in their future. Sponsorship activities are divided into public relations, advertising and marketing based on the targeted objectives. However, it is impossible to say that there is a sharp distinction between them. Public relations, advertising and marketing activities complement each other, and have similar sponsorship objectives, just as a coherent flow is expected between brand and corporate communication elements. That is to say that if increasing the brand or corporate recognition or acquiring the goodwill of the community, which are among the public relations objectives of sponsorship, are not achieved by the brand or corporation as an outcome, promoting the use of products or increasing client loyalty can be challenging. In other words, advertising, public relations, and marketing objectives of sponsorship should be targeted together through continuous and integral communication of sponsorship. Such integrity is also essential for brand equity creation. The institutions or brands that desire to dominate the consumer’s world should primarily create brand equity in their mind map. Brand equity is a concept with various sub-dimensions including brand awareness, brand association, brand loyalty, perceived quality and general brand equity. With the sponsorship applications aimed at marketing, such as introducing a new product, supporting the use of an existing product, positioning the product, supporting the dealers, creating a change in the marketing strategy, and supporting the international marketing strategy, awareness of, and association with a brand name can be developed in the target groups; the perceived quality can be raised, and client loyalty towards the brand can be achieved. In other words, the results of many scientific researches have shown that sponsorship practices are beneficial towards increasing the equity of a brand in general terms.

This study consists of three main sections. In the first part, the concepts of sponsorship for marketing and related subheadings are given. In the second part, the concept of brand equity and its sub-dimensions are mentioned. In the third and last section, the practical results of the research are described. Accordingly, information about the research method, data collection method and tools, and limitations, are given first. The findings of the socio-demographic characteristics of the participants, factor, correlation and regression analyzes of the variables are included in the final part.

This study was conducted to measure the impact of sponsorship activities for marketing purposes on consumer-based brand equity over the dates ranging from February 2018 to May 2018. The purpose of the study is to determine whether there is a meaningful relationship between the concept of brand equity at the consumer level and the sponsorship activities for marketing purposes, as well as to determine the direction and strength of the relationship between the two. The research was conducted with over 412 participants using a survey technique. In the two-part survey questionnaire, the scales developed by Speed and Thompson (2000) for measuring participants’ perceptions on sponsorship for marketing purposes was used together with another scale by Yoo and Donthu (2001); Taşkın and Akat (2010) for measuring brand equity perception of consumers. The questionnaire was prepared as a Likert scale with 32 variables. Scale expressions of the research were prepared through the sponsorship of A National Teams of Arçelik brand. SPSS was used in the realization of the research analyses. According the factor analysis results, the sponsorship scale for marketing was perceived by the participants in one dimension while the brand equity scale was perceived by the participants in 4 subdimensions namely, brand awareness / brand association, perceived quality, brand loyalty and general brand equity.

According to the results of the correlation analysis, it was determined that there is a moderate strength and meaningful correlation between the sponsorship for marketing factor and the brand equity factor. According to these results, there is a significant positive relationship and strength of β=500 between the sponsorship for marketing factor, and the brand awareness / association factor; β=462 between sponsorship for marketing factor and the perceived quality factor; β=480 between sponsorship for marketing factor and the brand loyalty factor; and β=508 between the sponsorship for marketing factor and the general brand equity factor. When looking at the regression results, it was understood that the model is meaningful. According to the regression coefficient results, the correlation between brand awareness / brand association dependent variable and the sponsorship for marketing independent variable was 25%. The perceived quality and the sponsorship for marketing purposes perception were found to 21.3% correlated. The rate of explaining the brand loyalty dependent variable of the sponsorship perception for marketing purposes variable is 23%. Lastly, the link between the general brand equity and the sponsorship for marketing perception was 25.8%. According to the results of both the previous study, which was obtained through literature review, and this study, which was carried out to determine the effect of sponsorship activities for marketing purposes on the consumer-based brand equity, sponsorship for marketing and brand equity significantly affect each other.