The loyal family: Why do we stick with our team? By Professor Mark Griffiths

Why are we so loyal to our national and club football teams? Whatever the results, we tend to support them week in week out all year round. They can cause us misery and heartache and yet still we support them. As a Sunderland fan, I know this only too well!

It has been argued by academics working in the marketing field that commercial organisations would love to have the kind of brand loyalty shown by football fans – something that Ken Parker and Trish Stuart argued in their 1997 award winning paper ‘The ‘West Ham Syndrome’ published in the Journal of the Market Research Society (I’m not making this up, honest!).

Parker and Stuart, working at the time of the study for the company Discovery Research, surveyed 2000 adults and also carried out some focus group interviews with football fans (including some ardent West Ham United supporters). They found that 58% of males had made a commitment to their club team by the age of 11 years. (I just happen to be one of those men, having supported Sunderland from the age of 7 after watching them beat Leeds in the 1973 FA Cup Final). More than half of children whose parents supported a team went on to support the same one, while a third of all fans still followed their local team.

Marketeers would love to be able to take the seemingly unstinted loyalty of football fans and somehow transfer that loyalty to the products they are trying to sell. For instance, the brand of coffee we buy tends to governed by many factors such as television advertising, the taste, the price, the packaging, etc. If we come across coffee that (for whatever reason) is better (cheaper, tastes better, etc.), we automatically switch our ‘allegiance’ to another brand of coffee. Parker and Stuart argued that wherever West Ham finish in the league, Hammers fans would not desert their club and/or switch to another club. So what’s the difference between football clubs as a brand and other commercial products as a brand? Maybe it’s passion and the fact that football can be such an emotional experience for the diehard fan.

Some working in the advertising industry claim many people working in marketing lack passion in their product. Apparently there are other products (such as cars) that consumers get very passionate about that means they repeatedly buy a particular make of car despite any acknowledged faults. However, one huge fault can damage a brand’s reputation almost overnight, as Toyota is only too aware. The good news for Toyota is that one of the most interesting things about research on the ‘West Ham Syndrome’ is that it can help to explain why leading brands are able to bounce back from PR disasters in similar ways to football clubs come back from being relegated to a lower division.

However, are football fans really as loyal as most of us assume? A paper by Alan Tapp at the University of the West of England examined the loyalty of football fans (Journal of Database Marketing and Customer Strategy Management, 2004) and wondered what it is about football clubs as a brand that makes them so successful – especially as the ‘product’ is so inconsistent and unpredictable? (‘Inconsistent’ and ‘unpredictable are certainly words I would associate with the England team and the England players!). Parker and Stuart claimed that levels of loyalty were “only marginally affected” by West Ham’s fortunes”. However, Alan Tapp says this is completely untrue. He cites analysis of football attendance figures since 1945 to show that crowd sizes are related to a team’s position in the league, and that teams lose support when they are doing poorly.

Despite the fact that crowd attendance is linked to how well a football club is doing, it’s still probably true to say that football fans are still more loyal to their club than they are to most other products. All this goes to show is that most of us will continue to love England, warts and all.

Professor Mark Griffiths, psychologist, Nottingham Trent University

To speak to Mark, call the University Press Office directly on 0115 848 8785 or email worldcup@ntu.ac.uk

[To view Nottingham Trent University’s team of World Cup experts go to www.ntu.ac.uk/worldcup]

The Morning After: England vs Slovenia, by Athalie Redwood Brown

It was great to see an England team who played with spirit and passion yesterday. As they grew in confidence, they seemed to become more united in their mission to reach the final sixteen. Their unity and imagination on the ball was a far cry from the uninspiring and frustrated side that played against Slovenia. Another new line-up could have put Capello in the firing line, and somewhat open to comments of “peer pressure” that had surrounded team selection earlier in the week; but the strong-minded manager made it clear who was in charge.

The lack of fluency in midfield that had been seen against Algeria seemed a thing of the past and the team kept hold of the ball and rarely looked in trouble as the Slovenians pressed hard.  Rooney again failed to find his “spark” up front, but seemed more at home with Defoe by his side.  The injection of Defoe’s imagination and pace might have been just what England needed up front.

There was some criticism after the Algeria game of Capello and his strict “head master” like leadership; producing a team on the pitch that were “playing scared”. Although there were some shaky moments in the first few minutes of the game,  as the side grew in confidence the ball seemed to flow more readily around the pitch, especially from the midfield to the strikers. The heads that had gone down so easily in the previous game seemed lifted as the dedicated fan base showed their support for the side.  A team that had struggled to dominate and close down against Algeria were now showing the discipline and spirit of a squad that did not want to end their World Cup bid.

A lack of commitment was proposed as the reason for the under-performance in previous games, but there is a fine line between lack of commitment and anxiety. The World Cup finals is a place for taking chances and raising your game.  Although England gave us a glimpse of what they can do against Slovenia, Germany will be coming away from some strong performances.  England have always seemed to raise their game against stronger sides, and one could say coming through the dark times over the last week will make them stronger, and more confident that they can unite to play like champions.

One thing is for certain, the next game will be challenge.  The World Cup starts now!  Forget the groups, each game needs passion and spirit. There was a real buzz around the stadium as the final whistle blew last night, let’s hope that Capello and his team can bottle this momentum to bring the intensity and passion of their game to the Germans.

Athalie Redwood-Brown, Senior Lecturer in Performance Analysis of Sport, Nottingham Trent University

To speak to Athalie, call the University Press Office directly on 0115 848 8785 or email worldcup@ntu.ac.uk

[To view Nottingham Trent University’s team of World Cup experts go to www.ntu.ac.uk/worldcup]