1999 Bennett Sports sponsorship, spectator recall and false consensus

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European Journal of Marketing
Sports sponsorship, spectator recall and false consensus
Roger Bennett
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Roger Bennett , (1999),"Sports sponsorship, spectator recall and false consensus", European Journal of
Marketing, Vol. 33 Iss 3/4 pp. 291 - 313
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Colin McDonald, (1991),"Sponsorship and the Image of the Sponsor", European Journal of Marketing, Vol.
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John Amis, Trevor Slack, Tim Berrett, (1999),"Sport sponsorship as distinctive competence", European
Journal of Marketing, Vol. 33 Iss 3/4 pp. 250-272 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/03090569910253044
Kevin Gwinner, (1997),"A model of image creation and image transfer in event sponsorship", International
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Sports
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European Journal of Marketing,
Vol. 33 No. 3/4, 1999, pp. 291-313.
# MCB University Press, 0309-0566
Sports sponsorship, spectator
recall and false consensus
Roger Bennett
Department of Business Studies, London Guildhall University,
London, UK
Keywords Advertising, Brands, Consumer behaviour, Sport, Sponsorship
Abstract Zajonc's mere exposure hypothesis plus a variant of the Ross false consensus theorem
were tested on samples of UK football (soccer) supporters categorised according to their frequency
of attendance at three London football grounds. Spectator recall of sponsors' and other
advertising business's posters (billboards) around the perimeters of playing pitches was measured
and the level of false consensus (i.e. belief that team sponsors' brands are purchased by far higher
proportions of, first, fellow supporters and, second, members of the general public than is actually
the case) was assessed. Substantial mere exposure and false consensus effects were noted.
Introduction
Sponsorship is an important tool of marketing communication that seeks to
achieve favourable publicity for a company and/or its brands within a certain
target audience via the support of an activity not directly linked to the
company's normal business. It is an indirect form of promotion: the company or
brand name is incidental to the event being watched or the person supported by
the sponsoring firm. A large amount of sponsorship aims to project the
sponsor's corporate image to an audience, rather than attempting to relate a
brand's unique attributes to the known characteristics of target groups,
essentially because many brands are today so similar to those of competing
businesses that corporate brand identity is often the major factor that
distinguishes a particular brand. Sponsorship differs from patronage in that
whereas the latter involves financial or material donations made altruistically
and without any expectation of returns through extra advertising or publicity
for the benefactor; sponsorship demands short- or long-term contributions to
the commercial success of the sponsoring firm (ISBA, 1982; Meenaghan, 1983,
1991a). Sponsorship might be undertaken to improve a company's sales
(Marshall and Cook, 1992; Varadarajan and Menon, 1988), to build a corporate
image (Marshall and Cook, 1992; Simkins, 1980), to reach a narrow section of
people (Freeman and Walley, 1988), or to achieve multiple objectives (Abratt et
al., 1987; Irwin and Asimokopoulos, 1992; Meenaghan, 1983). It might also help
a company attract and retain high calibre employees, as it can project corporate
images which imply close involvement with activities valued by current and
potential workers (Allen, 1990; Gardner and Schuman, 1987; Shimp, 1993). A
number of studies have concluded that sponsorship can be a highly cost-
effective method of marketing communication (Marshall and Cook, 1992;
Meenaghan, 1991b; Thwaites, 1995). For example, Miles (1995) reported that
responses to promotional materials issued by the Visa credit card organisation
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and featuring its sponsorship of the Olympic Games were 17 per cent higher
than for a control group to which Olympic sponsorship images were not
transmitted. Also card usage was observed to increase by an average 21 per
cent during promotions based on major sponsorships. Mintel (1990) found that
unprompted awareness of the name of an insurance company sponsoring a
national cricket competition increased from 2 to 16 per cent over a two-year
period, and that the recall levels of the names of three brands of cigarette used
in motor racing sponsorship rose from 6, 11 and 22 per cent in 1974 to 55, 50
and 66 per cent in 1988 (using motor racing as the recall prompt). Texaco's
prompted recall percentage improved from 18 to 60 per cent in consequence of
motor racing sponsorship over the same period.
Sponsorship can (beneficially) appear to potential customers as less overtly
``commercial'' than conventional advertising. Against this however is the
possibility that message impact and recall may fall dramatically soon after a
sponsored event. Note how spectators attending a sponsored activity (a football
match for example) are in a sense forcibly exposed to the sponsor's
advertisements within a controlled environment. Surveying existing US and
Continental European empirical literature on advertisement recall percentages
after forced exposure in controlled situations that included other
advertisements Franzen (1994) reported that after 20 to 30 minutes, at least a
quarter of respondents have no recollection whatsoever of the advertised
brand, around 10 per cent name the wrong brand, while another 10 per cent or
more have but a vague recollection of the overall product category. Twenty-
four hours following exposure, about half of all respondents have forgotten the
advertisement ± even after prompting (using the product category as the
stimulus). Provision of direct brand-related prompts rarely leads to more than
25 to 30 per cent recall after this period.
Potential sponsors have an abundance of entities and activities which they
can choose to support: sports, arts, community activities, charities, teams,
tournaments, individual personalities or events, ad hoc competitions, fairs,
shows, etc. Sports sponsorship is by far the most popularsponsorship medium,
accounting for at least three-quarters of all sponsorship spending in both the
UK and the US (Thwaites, 1995) and offering high visibility, extensive
television and press coverage, the ability both to attract a broad cross-section of
the community and to serve specific niches, and (importantly) the capacity to
break down cultural barriers (Sleight, 1989). It is hardly surprising, therefore,
that the aggregate value of sports sponsorship in the UK quadrupled over the
years 1980-89 (Allen, 1990), and is still rising (Thwaites, 1995). Marshall and
Cook (1992) noted the popularity of particular sports as targets for company
sponsorship, with football and motor sport dominating expenditures. Half of
their sample of 105 UK sponsoring firms reported that reach into the target
audience was the main reason for the choice of which sport to sponsor (rather
than product linkage or the image of the activity).
In Britain, association football (soccer) is the most heavily sponsored of all
sporting activities. Half of all UK males play, watch (live or on television), or
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read about football (Mintel, 1991). All age and socio-economic categories are
well-represented among the general body of male football supporters (Wright,
1988). In England the major (``Premier'') league is currently sponsored by the
brewers Bass Ltd (under a four-year deal effective from the 1993/94 season),
and runs under the title The FA Carling Premiership (``Carling'' being a well-
known brand of lager). Individual teams belonging to the Premier league are
sponsored by particular companies, the latters' names and logos appearing on
players' shirts and other items of kit, on perimeter boards around the playing
area, in match programmes, and on banners and hoardings prominently
displayed within the ground. Advertisers who are not sponsors sometimes
enter deals whereby their names appear on large posters placed around the
perimeters of all Premier league pitches throughout the country for several
months at a time, a practice encouraged by British television's convention of
showing highlights from a random selection of Premiership games in a single
programme broadcast on Saturday evenings. Thwaites (1995) reports that 60
per cent of respondents in a sample of 30 UK companies sponsoring soccer
teams stated that outcomes to sponsorship were well above expectations.
Football sponsorship was considered by these companies to reach a very wide
audience of disparate consumer types, to ``influence the community'', and to
enhance national brand awareness. Respondents obviously believed that
football enthusiasts represented an important and accessible cross-section of
the overall buying public.
The exposure environment
Since posters are located around the perimeters of playing areas, spectators are
exposed to them whenever the focus of a game moves in particular directions.
Also there is ``mere exposure'' (see below) to pitch perimeter (and other) posters
prior to the start of the match, during the half-time interval, and as spectators'
attention wanders from the action (during a boring period of play for example).
The emotional circumstances in which perimeter posters and/or sponsoring
company's other promotional images are observed might affect recall and
message impact. Wright (1981) for instance concluded that audiences find it
difficult to remember brief advertisements confronted in distracting situations
which inhibit recipients' abilities to think about messages. At the same time,
the configuration of an exciting game and packed stadium can represent a
high-involvement medium for the transmission of commercial communications
(Nebenzahl and Hornik, 1985). Note how fans attending a football match have
no option but to look at perimeter advertisements, which can act as a reminder
of the firm/brand in question and represent a source of subliminal firm/brand
perception (McGuire, 1968),
Team sponsors (as opposed to businesses that simply advertise on perimeter
billboards) expect far more from their investments than the mere consequences
of exposure. A sponsor will hope that team supporters will mentally attribute
desirable characteristics to the sponsoring company/brand in consequence of
its endorsement by hero figures (team players), who come to represent a sort of
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``psychological hook'' upon which fans can hang the sponsor's messages. Hero
endorsements provide spectators with an external valued opinion of the calibre
of the company or brand, projecting unique signals that (hopefully) help fans
identify and remember the sponsor's advertising communications.
Effects of mere exposure
Franzen (1994) argued that advertisements mentally processed only at the
subconscious pre-attentive level can, with repetition, still produce an effective
response. Such stimuli arouse, via mere exposure, feelings of familiarity,
attraction and positive attitudes, even in the absence of cognitive processing
and conscious assessment of messages. A substantial body of empirical
literature supports this proposition that the repeated exposure of an individual
to a stimulus will, of itself, enhance that person's familiarity with and liking for
the stimulus. Zajonc (1968) concluded that the relationship between exposure
and liking takes the form of a monotonic increasing but decelerating curve.
Other researchers, however, have claimed that the function has the shape of an
inverted U, so that people respond most positively to exposures in the
intermediate frequency region (see Berlyne (1997) and Harrison (1977) for
reviews of the conflicting findings). One justification for the inverted U
hypothesis is that repeated exposure to a stimulus eventually causes the
observer to learn to expect to receive the message as a matter of course. Once
``learning'' (i.e. perceptual recognition and recall) has occurred then further
repetition leads to satiation: expectations are confirmed; the message is ``taken
for granted'' and ceases to be meaningful as it is crowded out by other
(unexpected and perhaps more interesting) stimuli. Hence tedium sets in and
further exposure actually decreases recall and liking. Borstein (1989) analysed
the results of 208 studies completed on mere exposure effects over the period
1968-87, concluding that the recall ceiling was reached after ten to 20
exposures.
Notwithstanding the debate concerning the precise form of the exposure/
liking relationship, substantial a priori reasons exist for suspecting that mere
exposure effects could be more powerful at sporting events than in other
circumstances. A number of empirical studies have suggested that affective
reactions to a stimulus depend crucially on the context in which exposure
occurs, as this becomes increasingly associated with the relevant stimulus
(Harrison, 1977; Sears et al., 1991). Hence an advertising message presented in
surroundings that elicit pleasant emotional responses should lead to increased
liking for the stimulus (Saegert et al., 1973). The atmosphere of a football match
is one of excitement, close identification with a particular team and perhaps
thereby a predisposition to accept influence: spectators are frequently exposed
to perimeter posters and because the latter are seen in a pleasant environment,
more notice might be taken of them than in other situations. People who attend
a football match choose to do so and go there in order to support their favourite
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team, so that visual images experienced during the event are perhaps more
likely to be retrievable from memory than those observed in less emotional
environments.
Evaluation of sponsorship effectiveness
The use of sales figures as an indicator of sponsorship effectiveness is highly
problematic in consequence of the possible influences of collateral marketing
communications inputs, carry-over effects of past advertising, changing
economic conditions, entry or exit of competing businesses, and so on. Hence,
the results of sponsorship are typically appraised in terms of awareness levels
achieved; attitudes created or altered; prompted and unprompted brand or
company name recall; the extents of television, radio and press coverage, and
cost per thousand prospects. A common approach is to measure the duration of
television coverage of a sponsored event and the magnitude of press coverage
obtained in terms of single column inches and then to compute the cost of
purchasing corresponding amounts of space or broadcast time (Allen, 1990).
This is convenient and practicable, but only indicates the extent of the publicity
resulting from sponsorship, rather than the impact and effects of the exposure
(Meenaghan, 1991a; Parker, 1991; Shanklin and Kuzma, 1992). Meenaghan
(1991a) recommends a three-fold evaluation procedure: determination of a
company's present position in terms of pre-sponsorship awareness and image
with the target audience; tracking to detect movements in customer attitudes
towards the firm; and the post-sponsorship comparison of performance levels
against initial objectives. A number of theorists have advocated the use of
tracking devices to monitor sponsorship effectiveness (see Thwaites (1995) for
a review of the relevant literature). Marshall and Cook (1992) found however
that although 78 per cent of a sample of 58 UK sponsoring companies evaluated
their investments in some way or other, very few of them actually undertook
specialised tracking (customer mail or telephone surveys to establish changes
in attitudes and purchasing activities were the most frequently used evaluation
method). Allen (1990) similarly reported evidence to suggest that only a small
number of companies completed any formal evaluation of their sponsorship
expenditure, or engaged in any research whatsoever designed to identify the
likely interests of target customers. A survey conducted by Thwaites (1995)
found that while two-thirds of a sample of 30 companies sponsoring UK
football teams attempted to evaluate their sponsorship activities, few went
beyond the basic measurement of media coverage. And generally
unsophisticated methods seemed to be applied. Reasons advanced for not
evaluating sponsorship effectiveness included the costs and uncertainties
involved, technical research difficulties, absence of meaningful criteria for
assessment, and lack of clear initial objectives (Allen, 1990; Thwaites, 1995). In
the following sections it is suggested that a sponsoring company's ability to
create false consensus (see below) among spectators represents a concrete and
useful device for measuring the effectiveness of sponsorship activities.
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False consensus
The false consensus effect occurs when individuals assume that their own
judgements and choices are common and appropriate, and that alternative
judgements are rare and incorrect (Ross, 1977), i.e. what one does and believes
oneself is regarded as normal and customary among peers. Individuals are said
to imagine that large numbers of other people respond in the ways that they do
and to see their own attitudes as typical of the group to which they want to
belong (Sherman et al., 1984; Wetzel and Walton, 1985). False consensus has
been found in a variety of situations (see Mullen et al., 1985; Mullen and Hu,
1988), including personal opinions concerning the proportions of other
consumers who purchase particular brands of products (Baron and Byrne,
1994; Nisbett and Kunda, 1985; Suls et al., 1988).
It is suggested that a variant of the false consensus effect can occur in
relation to team supporters' estimates of the popularity of a sponsoring
company's brands among other fans of the same team, and indeed among the
buying public in general. Attending a football match and supporting a team
enables fans to affiliate with other people with whom they share perceptions,
generating positive emotions towards the group, its norms and images. The
team endorsing the sponsoring firm's products is attractive to the team's
followers (as it is both familiar and liked); and it is known that people are more
likely to be influenced by a communicator who is trusted and liked (see Sears et
al., 1991, chapter six for a review of the extensive literature on this point). Team
players endorsing products or companies on their kit and elsewhere should
therefore be highly persuasive communicators of promotional messages. To the
extent that liking for the team causes the sponsor's brands to be positively
regarded, then an individual fan's sense of identification with other supporters
of the team and his or her desire mentally to affiliate with them might cause
that person to assume that fellow supporters have equally positive attitudes
towards the sponsor. Liking for the sponsor becomes an implicit group norm
which the fan wants to accept in order to strengthen his or her sense of
association with hero figures. Importantly, other members of the referent group
(i.e. other supporters of the team in question) are also presumed to hold the
sponsor in high regard. Constant exposure to the sponsor's communications
results in the fan ``learning'' that supporters of a certain team like a particular
brand or company. This in turn helps the fan to feel that he or she is ``one of the
crowd'' and to identify psychologically with fellow supporters. Possibly, the
fan's personal perception of a brand's attributes gradually merge with those
assumed to be held by fellow supporters, who are presupposed to be in favour
of the brand in question in direct consequence of its connection with heroes.
If valid, the hypothesised false consensus effect has important implications
for sponsorship management. Numerous studies have followed Asch (1955) in
concluding that opinions expressed by a majority are frequently strong enough
to produce conformity to the majority group opinions espoused. Equally, it is
reasonable to speculate that opinions thought by the individual to be held by
the majority of a group to which he or she aspires to belong (i.e. false
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consensus) will influence that person's evaluation of a sponsoring firm: the
individual, it is argued, is likely to conform to the perceived majority view that
the sponsoring company's products are worthy of purchase, even if the
majority do not actually favour the product. This could exert much influence on
individual purchasing decisions, since a person who overestimates the
percentage of other people who consume a particular brand is more likely,
ceteris paribus, personally to become a consumer of that brand. A second
potential benefit to sponsoring companies arising from false consensus is that
once identification with the team, fellow fans and the sponsor has taken place
then individual liking for the company/brand/officially endorsed by team
heroes may become internalised within the person, i.e. the endorser's stated
position is accepted by the message recipient as being his or her own, and
subsequently maintained even if the original source of the communication is
subsequently forgotten (see Petty et al., 1981; Shimp,1993), e.g. if the individual
stops following football. A third advantage is that false consensus may lead a
person to believe that positive regard for the sponsoring firm's products is
normal, rational and objective, providing the individual with psychological
comfort and enhancing his or her self-confidence in the appropriateness of his
or her judgements about and perceptions of the sponsoring company (see
Marks and Miller, 1987; Sherman et al., 1984). Finally, it is suggested (following
Baron and Byrne, 1994, pp. 90-1) that false consensus can improve memory and
recall of the sponsor's messages. People find it easier to notice and later
remember things they presume that valued peers agree with them about than
things concerning which valued peers are presumed to disagree. Hence the
pattern of mental information processing is distorted, with the result that
people have much less difficulty in bringing items of perceived agreement to
mind. Also, in choosing to follow a particular team a person is exposing him or
herself to involvement with others assumed to share the same enthusiasm for
that team, so that this sharing of perceptions and wanting to be alike (in the
sense of exhibiting intense liking for the team in question) can lead to desires
for agreement and hence to a higher level of attention being paid to the
sponsor's messages and products. Note moreover that fans of the same team
are demonstrating similar attitudes throughout a game: cheering and booing at
the same times and over the same incidents. And the holding of similar
attitudes is known to facilitate interpersonal attraction (Byrne and Nelson,
1965; Schachter, 1951).
Hypotheses and methodology
This paper presents the results of an empirical study into the following
questions:
(1) What are the levels of recall among association football spectators for
the perimeter posters of: sponsoring companies; and other regular
advertisers apart from the sponsor?
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(2) To what extent (if any) do recall levels vary with respect to the amounts
of individual exposure to perimeter posters, and what is the shape of the
recall function?
(3) Do supporters of a particular team overestimate the degree to which
other supporters of that team purchase the team sponsor's brands (false
consensus) and if so does the phenomenon extend to overestimates by
fans of the popularity of these brands among the general public?
(4) Do exposure and/or false consensus effects differ according to: whether
a team is doing well or badly; and levels of spectator loyalty to the
team?
To investigate these matters, samples of supporters of three London Premier
league soccer teams (plus a control group) were questioned about their recall of
sponsoring companies and of the perimeter posters of various firms. Interviews
were conducted as fans were entering or leaving stadia for games played in
December-January 1995-96, which for English football is just over half way
through the season ± with around 22 games having been played. During the
first half of the 1995-96 season a number of companies had large perimeter
billboards advertising their names or brands at all Carling Premiership
grounds in the London area: McDonald's, the Alliance and Leicester Building
Society, Lucozade, Wilkinson Sword, and Carling (itself the sponsor of the
League). The teams selected for the study were Arsenal (sponsored by JVC),
which at the time the research was undertaken was in the top four of 20 teams
in the Premier league; Chelsea (sponsored by Coors beer), which occupied tenth
position; and Wimbledon (sponsored by Elonex plc ± a personal and business
computer hardware and software company) which half way through the season
was struggling in eighteenth position, having won only four games to that
point. Despite their different locations in the Premier league, the three clubs had
attained roughly equal amounts of television coverage: all three had by then
been knocked out of major continental European football tournaments (teams
engaged in European competition attract extensive television and press
attention).
Fans were approached at random. On arrival at a ground each interviewer
was allocated to a particular turnstile, at which he or she propositioned the
nearest person and requested an interview. If the fan supported the home team
and the person agreed to answer questions, the interview went ahead. Then the
interviewer moved to an adjacent turnstile and repeated the process. Turnstiles
at London stadia are normally arranged in clusters of four or five mid-way
along a street or at a street corner. Certain clusters are designated for use by
visiting, away-team supporters and were not approached as the individuals
going through them were outside the sampling frame of the study. The
procedure adopted may be described as quasi-random systematic sampling,
with particular respondents at each turnstile cluster being approached at fairly
consistent time intervals (analogous to picking units from a production line
periodically). That such a sampling method generates near random samples
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from which meaningful statistical inferences can be drawn is well established
(see for example Lindgren, 1976; Owen and Jones, 1994). Indeed, Cochran (1963)
argues that since systematic sampling produces a relatively even spread of
observations across the relevant population, the inferences derived from the
application of the procedure may be considerably more precise than are
obtained from other sampling techniques ± provided no periodicity occurs in
the presentation of items possessing particular characteristics (i.e. the ordering
of the population must itself be random). There were no discernible
periodicities in the characteristics of fans entering or leaving the stadia, and it
seems reasonable to suppose that (with a single exception ± see below) only
random factors determined respondent selection. The one circumstance in
which it was deemed inappropriate to approach fans was for a small minority
of fans who appeared potentially aggressive (hooliganism is a continuing
problem at English soccer matches). Thus respondent selection was
(deliberately) biased in this respect.
Random pre- and post-match interviewing was facilitated by the fact that
(following the Hillsborough tragedy at which an entry gate collapsed causing
many deaths and personal injuries), ground entry and exit procedures at
Premier League games are very stringent, necessitating lengthy delays when
entering and leaving stadia. Also, local public transport is scheduled to avoid
huge numbers of fans arriving at or moving from stadia at the same moment so
that there is a steady stream of people coming to and leaving a ground over a
protracted period, with much queuing and ``standing around'' outside the
stadium prior to the start of a game and as fans vacate the stadium area.
Premier League games are extremely popular and attract large attendances,
which exacerbates the entry/exit problem. This creates numerous opportunities
for questioning fans before and after matches, without the particular persons
approached possessing any special or unrepresentative characteristics.
Interviewees were generally good-natured and co-operative.
A list of seven questions was prepared in order to test spectators' levels of
recall of perimeter posters (including those advertising sponsors' products),
with and without prompts from the interviewer. Fans were first asked a
question without any memory prompt whatsoever, followed by a memory
assisting question that named the relevant company or product. This is a well-established procedure that is commonly employed in advertising recall
research, and which has been widely reported in relevant literature (see for
example Burke, 1980; Franzen, 1994; Nebenzahl and Hornik, 1985; Ostlund,
1978). Meenaghan (1991a) offers a number of examples of how major UK
sponsoring companies (Cornhill Insurance for instance) periodically use
leading (prompted) awareness questions to compare interviewees' responses
against unprompted replies when measuring sponsorship effectiveness. An
initial version of the interview questions was pretested a month prior to the
main investigation at all three grounds. This provided useful feedback and
formed the basis for amendments to the original draft. In particular it emerged
that a number of respondents had problems with conceptualising proportions
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in ``percentage'' terms, i.e. it was not obvious that all interviewees had a total
grasp of what ``5 per cent'' or ``15 per cent'' actually represented. However, such
respondents did seem to understand the idea of a proportion when it was
worded as (say) ``1 in 20'' (rather than ``5 per cent''), or ``1 in 6'' (rather than the
nearest approximation of ``15 per cent''), or ``1 in 50'' (rather than ``2 per cent''),
etc. Accordingly, interviewees were invited to reply to questions about
proportions in either percentage or ``one in so many'' terms, at the choice of the
respondent. This worked well and did not confuse the people being questioned.
The trial run also established that simple language was necessary to ensure
proper understanding of the questions by all respondents (bearing in mind the
socio-economic and cultural diversity of London's population). Words had to be
chosen and sentences arranged in such a way that interviewees connected with
their true meaning, rather than the words and sentences possessing
grammatical correctness and precision.
The study proceeded as follows.
Fans entering Arsenal, Chelsea and Wimbledon stadia and supporting the
home team were asked:
Question 1. Can you think of the name of a fast food outlet, a building
society, a health drink, a brand of shaving razor, and a brand of lager?
This is a standard unaided recall question of the type commonly applied in
advertising recall studies (Burke, 1980; Franzen, 1994; Nebenzahl and Hornik,
1985). Each element of the question was of course asked separately, i.e. the
respondent was first asked ``Can you think of the name of a fast food outlet?''
and the reply recorded before proceeding to the next element, ``Can you think of
the name of a building society?'' For interviews conducted at Arsenal
(sponsored by JVC) the question was supplemented with a query as to whether
the respondent could name a supplier of hi-fi, video and other electrical
equipment, video tapes, etc. At the Chelsea ground the supplement was to ask
the supporter to name a brand of beer; at Wimbledon to name a supplier of
computer hardware and software for personal and business use.
The interviewer then made the statement, ``JVC is the sponsor of Arsenal
(the names Coors and Elonex were quoted in the cases of Chelsea and
Wimbledon respectively)'', and asked:
Question 2. Does this (sponsorship) encourage you to use JVC products a
lot, a bit, or doesn't it make any difference?
The purpose of this (fully aided) question was to elicit interviewees' degrees of
enthusiasm for and responsiveness to the sponsor's involvement with the club
and whether they felt this sponsorship was relevant to them personally. Also,
comparison of the replies to this question with actual average purchase levels
by various categories of supporter provides a rudimentary quantitative
measure of sponsorship effectiveness in relation to team followers'
susceptibilities to influence by the sponsor's affiliation with the team under
consideration.
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This was followed by:
Question 3. How many Arsenal supporters as a whole do you think buy
JVC products: is it 1 in 20, 1 in 50, 1 in 10, a quarter, half, 1 per cent, 3 per
cent, or what?
Question 4. How many people in general apart from Arsenal supporters
do you think buy JVC products: 1 in 20, 1 in 50, ..., etc.?
Questions 3 and 4 were the basic questions used to test the false consensus
hypothesis. The names Coors and Elonex were of course applied in the cases of
Chelsea and Wimbledon.
Other supporters of the home team but this time leaving the stadium were
asked:
Question 5. Can you remember the names of any firms or brands
advertised on perimeter posters? If so please state their names.
This was followed by:
Question 6. Can you remember having seen a poster for a fast food
outlet; for a building society; a health drink; a brand of shaving razor; a
brand of lager?
Questions 5 and 6 were the unprompted and partially prompted questions used
to assess departing spectators' recall of perimeter posters. They were followed
by the fully aided:
Question 7. Do you recall having seen a poster for McDonald's; for
Alliance and Leicester; Lucozade; Wilkinson Sword; Carling; and for JVC
(or Coors or Elonex in the cases of Chelsea and Wimbledon)?
The name of a brand not advertised at the ground was also included to act as a
dummy control. Finally the fans leaving the ground were asked Questions 2, 3
and 4. Interviewers reported that the responses elicited by the questions were
generally definite and delivered without hesitation, implying that questions
were properly understood, despite their simplicity.
Members of a control group comprising people not otherwise connected with
the investigation were asked if they could name a fast food outlet, a building
society, a brand of shaving razor, etc., and what proportions of the overall
buying public they believed purchased JVC products, Coors beer and Elonex
brands. The sample of the control group comprised males, nearly all of whom
were English and white. All age groups were represented; interviewers were
told to record a subjective evaluation of whether each respondent was ``older''
(seemingly over about 35 years of age) or ``younger''. (Trial interviews
demonstrated that fans reacted negatively to enquiries about their age.) The
control group was selected at random from white male passers-by who, when
asked, said they were ``quite interested in football''. Interviews were kept
deliberately short and none lasted more than a few minutes (fans were not
prepared to spend any longer answering questions).
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Three categories of supporter were distinguished: avid and committed
supporters (typically season ticket holders) who to that point in the season had
attended at least seven games to support their team (home or away ± bearing in
mind that the London teams periodically play each other); regular supporters,
who had attended four to six games; and occasional supporters who had
attended fewer than four matches. Obviously, season ticket holders and other
committed supporters had been exposed to perimeter posters far more
frequently than the other classes of visitor. The category to which each
interviewee belonged was established at the start of the interviews.
Identification of committed supporters was greatly facilitated by the existence
of special entrances for season ticket holders in certain ground areas. Care was
taken to ensure that interviewees had been in sections of the ground offering a
full view of relevant posters (this could be established from the exitgates via
which people left the stadia).
There are no a priori reasons for believing that respondents were
unrepresentative of the total population of English football supporters. London
is a cosmopolitan and culturally diverse city. Crowds at London football
matches can be reasonably expected to possess a fair mix of persons of
disparate backgrounds, educational levels, social experiences and attitudes,
prejudices, etc. and generally to exhibit the same range of characteristics as
fans in the rest of the country. Ground layouts are the same nationally, as are
poster displays at Premier League matches. Attendances at Premier League
games are large (typically exceeding 25,000) so that samples taken from
football crowds are likely to possess similar features as are present in the wider
sports-following public. Interest in football is seemingly universal among
males, and living in London should not of itself affect supporters' cognitions or
susceptibilities to influence by promotional messages. Football watchers,
moreover, are known to be broadly representative of sports enthusiasts
generally, with all (male) socio-economic and age categories being well
represented (Mintel, 1991; Thwaites, 1995; Wright, 1988). There is a large
degree of overlap between interest in football and interest in other sports,
which explains why so many sponsoring companies target football fans in
order to reach a broad range of sports-orientated people (Marshall and Cook,
1992). Note also how the immediate environmental circumstances in which
spectators watch Premier League football matches are essentially similar to
those experienced at other major sporting occasions. Emotional states at
football games and other sports events are comparable: there is excitement,
hero worship, identity with a particular team or celebrity, and a high degree of
personal psychological involvement with the contest. Schartzman and Strauss
(1973), Mook (1983) and others have argued that it is legitimate to generalise
conclusions derived from responses obtained during field experiments
provided the sample reflects the sorts of people to whom the results are to be
generalised (at least approximately) in the wider population. The crucial
question is not so much whether sample respondents' particular characteristics
differ from those of other people, but rather whether such differences matter or
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are outweighed by overlaps in relation to the topic under consideration (Cook
and Campbell, 1975). Mook (1983) suggests that the relevant criteria should be
whether the characteristics of the sample, first, actually prevent the drawing of
meaningful inferences and, second, negate the generalisability of conclusions. It
is suggested that neither of these barriers apply to the present experiment.
Interviews themselves were conducted over a four-week period on the streets
outside stadia in the 90 minutes or so preceding matches and as fans were
leaving grounds. The work was undertaken by the author and two research
assistants who supervised two teams of business students who completed the
interviews as part of a graded market research assignment. A total of 11 people
were involved on any one occasion (though team membership altered as most
of the students only attended a single game). Each person had a target of
obtaining ten pre-match interviews, ten post-match interviews plus ten
interviews for the control group (to be completed separately). Quality control
over the information gathered was exercised by the three supervisors who
observed and inspected interviewers' activities on a random basis. Also the
results obtained by each interviewer were subsequently examined to ascertain
whether they deviated significantly from all-sample averages. No such
deviations were observed, and it is concluded that the interviews were
conducted with integrity. Support for this proposition derives from the fact that
the results from those aspects of the study which overlapped with previous
research undertaken by other authors were very similar to the results reported
by these other studies (see the conclusions section below). Large disparities in
results relating to commonly researched issues would have signalled possible
defects in interview procedures. Quotas were set and resources deployed in
order to achieve roughly equal numbers of respondents in the committed
supporter (CS), regular supporter (RS) and occasional supporter (OS)
attendance categories, with at least 30 interviewees in each pre- and post-match
group at each ground. In the event a total of 672 interviews were completed
among supporters, and 117 for the control group. No attendance category at
any of the grounds contained fewer than 35 respondents.
The question arises whether respondents' answers might have been
influenced in some way by extraneous uncontrollable variables, rather than the
degree of exposure to sponsors' messages. Meenaghan (1991a) suggests three
potential sources of external contamination that might distort observed
relationships between sponsorship activities and their recorded effectiveness:
simultaneous use of other marketing inputs; carry-over effects of previous
promotional campaigns; and changes in economic conditions or the activities of
competitors. Accordingly, the public relations departments of the eight
advertising companies were contacted and asked whether their firms had
undertaken any major special promotions during the period of the study or in
the two months previously (earlier campaigns are unlikely to have exerted
significant carry-over recall effects ± see Franzen, 1994). Six replied directly
saying that no special promotions had been initiated over the period in
question. No reply was obtained from the other two, but there are no a priori
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reasons to believe that additional campaigns had been mounted (there was no
evidence of this from their observed promotional activities in the London area
from October to December). The six firms that replied were also asked whether
their marketing departments were aware of any substantial changes in
competitors' activities in the period under consideration. None of the
respondents could answer this query with any degree of certainty, although it
seemed there was no prima facie evidence of this having happened. There was
no obvious unfavourable publicity surrounding any of the eight companies
during the period in question.
Results
The statistical results of the study are given in Tables I-IV. They are generally
consistent with Zajonc's (1968) mere exposure hypothesis, and suggest
strongly that false consensus is an important consequence of sponsorship
activity. When home team supporters entering stadia were asked Question 1
(``name a fast food outlet, a building society'' etc.), it turned out that committed
supporters (i.e. people exposed to the messages on more-or-less a fortnightly
basis up to that point in the season) specified those companies/brands which
had in fact been advertising on perimeter posters in the ground under
consideration more often than fans in other attendance categories in 14 out of
18 cases (see Table I). Application of the standard t-test for differences between
proportions revealed moreover that the difference in response between
occasional and committed supporter categories was significant at the 5 per cent
level (at least) in nine of the 14 instances. Table I shows that the percentage of
committed supporters naming (without any prompt) a major advertiser at the
ground was nearly double that of less frequent attenders in seven cases.
Overall the average increasein correct naming between regular and committed
Table I.
Pre- and post-match
interviews: percentages
of home team
supporters naming
perimeter advertisers in
response to questions 1
and 6 (all figures are
percentages except for
sample sizes)
Arsenal Chelsea Wimbledon
OS RS CS OS RS CS OS RS CS
Pre-match
sample size 35 40 40 38 35 36 36 37 41
Post-match
sample size 37 36 39 36 38 37 40 35 36
McDonald's 31 (41) 33 (36) 40 (51) 39 (42) 26 (34) 42 (41) 33 (22) 35 (17) 24 (33)
Alliance and
Leicester 5 (11) 5 (14) 10 (14) 3 (9) 6 (11) 17 (8) 0 (15) 3 (15) 5 (11)
Lucozade 5 (5) 10 (17) 15 (6) 3 (12) 3 (16) 3 (3) 5 (9) 3 (9) 7 (11)
Wilkinson Sword 9 (22) 10 (14) 20 (17) 5 (16) 6 (22) 11 (8) 3 (9) 8 (9) 10 (14)
Carling Lager 20 (43) 17 (42) 20 (22) 8 (22) 11 (40) 14 (43) 5 (36) 16 (43) 22 (50)
JVC 14 (70) 15 (78) 25 (82) ± ± ± ± ± ±
Coors ± ± ± 5 (33) 11 (40) 9 (43) ± ± ±
Elonex ± ± ± ± ± ± 3 (15) 8 (10) 10 (14)
Notes: Percentages relating to Question 6 are shown in parentheses
OS = Occasional supporters, RS = Regular supporters, CS = Committed supporters
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attenders was 4.3 percentage points on an initial average of 12.3 for regular
attenders ± a 35 per cent improvement
Answers given by fans leaving stadia to the prompted recall question, ``Can
you recall having seen a poster for a fast food outlet?'', etc. (Question 6) also
Table II.
Post-match
unprompted recall
(Question 5) and aided
recall (Question 7)
Arsenal Chelsea Wimbledon
OS RS CS OS RS CS OS RS CS
McDonald's 8 (70) 11 (78) 13 (82) 11 (64) 16 (72) 22 (77) 6 (50) 6 (60) 6 (78)
Alliance and
Leicester
3 (22) 0 (22) 3 (38) 3 (14) 6 (18) 8 (22) 3 (19) 3 (16) 6 (26)
Lucozade 3 (11) 3 (22) 5 (38) 3 (8) 3 (18) 8 (18) 0 (19) 3 (16) 6 (33)
Wilkinson Sword 8 (30) 8 (42) 10 (72) 6 (42) 9 (23) 8 (36) 6 (19) 3 (20) 11 (33)
Carling Lager 16 (76) 11 (72) 18 (82) 6 (78) 6 (82) 16 (85) 6 (80) 10 (75) 14 (83)
JVC 16 (86) 22 (88) 26 (94) ± ± ± ± ± ±
Coors ± ± ± 11 (50) 16 (66) 16 (76) ± ± ±
Elonex ± ± ± ± ± ± 0 (53) 3 (60) 6 (78)
Dummy (5) (3) (3) (6) (3) (4) (6) (3) (3)
Notes: Percentages relating to Question 7 are shown in parentheses
OS = Occasional supporters, RS = Regular supporters, CS = Committed supporters
Table III.
Control group:
percentage responses
(N = 117)
McDonald's
Alliance
and
Leicester Lucozade
Wilkinson
Sword Carling JVC Coors Elonex
Percentage of
sample
naming this
firm/brand as
an example of
a general
product
category 30 6 8 11 9 9 0 2
Have you or
your family
ever bought
these firms'
products? (%
replying
``yes'') ± ± ± ± ± 4 1 0
What percentage
of the general
buying public
do you think
purchase
these firms'
products?(%
replying
``yes'') ± ± ± ± ± 3 1 1
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exhibited clear tendencies for increased frequency of attendance (and hence
exposure to perimeter posters) to result in more people naming companies/
brands actually advertised within grounds. Occasional supporters correctly
named the posters less frequently on average than did at least one of the other
two categories of attender in 13 out of the 18 cases, although differences in
responses between ``regular'' and ``committed'' supporters were not pronounced
(and were statistically significant in only two instances). Note how the impact
of perimeter posters on people attending a stadium less often than committed
Table IV.
Pre- and post-match
attraction to sponsored
products and false
consensus
Arsenal Chelsea Wimbledon
OS RS CS OS RS CS OS RS CS
Does the
company's
sponsorship
of the team
encourage
you to buy its
products?
(Question 2)
(i) a lot 9 (11) 5 (17) 8 (8) 11 (11) 9 (7) 3 (9) 0 (0) 8 (6) 5 (3)
(ii) a little 17 (8) 15 (11) 20 (5) 16 (11) 16 (18) 13 (22) 8 (11) 8 (6) 10 (16)
(iii) not at all 74 (81) 80 (72) 72 (77) 75 (78) 75 (75) 84 (69) 92 (89) 84 (88) 85 (81)
What percentage
of supporters
of the
sponsored
team do you
think buy the
sponsor's
products?
(Question 3) 17 (11) 13 (9) 16 (14) 9 (16) 6 (11) 12 (12) 6 (8) 4 (5) 5 (5)
What percentage
of the general
buying public
do you think
purchase the
sponsoring
company's
products?
(Question 4) 10 (8) 10 (9) 12 (11) 6 (8) 6 (6) 7 (6) 7 (2) 7 (3) 10 (8)
Have you or
your family
ever bought
the
sponsoring
firm's
product(s)? 6 (5) 8 (8) 5 (5) 3 (3) 0 (0) 3 (6) 0 (0) 0 (3) 3 (3)
Notes: Percentages relating to post-match interviews are shown in parentheses
OS = Occasional supporters, RS = Regular supporters, CS = Committed supporters
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supporters was nevertheless substantial; a gratifying observation from the
advertiser's point of view. Comparison of Table I and the results for answers
given to Question 1 by a control group (see Table III) indicates that in many
cases the enhancement of company/brand awareness and recall attributable to
repeated (forced) exposure to perimeter posters is extensive. For example, 9 per
cent of the control group named JVC as a supplier of hi-fi equipment, etc.
compared with 25 per cent for committed Arsenal supporters; while only 6 per
cent of control respondents named the Alliance and Leicester Building Society
as an organisation of its type, as against 17 per cent for committed Chelsea
supporters and 10 per cent for committed Arsenal fans. Regular or committed
supporters named the companies in question more frequently on average than
did members of the control group in 13 out of 18 cases (the main exceptions
being for Lucozade and Wilkinson Sword). Differences were statistically
significant in eight of the 13 instances. A dummy (non-existent) product
category was included in Question 6 and a few people claimed they had seen
posters advertising brands or companies in the dummy category. However
only a handful of spectators made this assertion so false recall is not regarded
as a serious problem in the present study.
Results for the answers to (the unprompted) Question 5 ``Can you name any
firm/brand on perimeter posters?'' confirm the above mentioned pattern (see
Table II). Committed supporters leaving stadia correctly named firms/brands
that were actually advertised on perimeter posters more frequently on average
than did regular or occasional fans in 15 out of 18 categories, with statistically
significant differences occurring in eight of the 15 cases. Table II also reports
the outcomes for (the fully aided) recall Question 7, which uses advertisers'
names as the prompt. Again there are distinct relations between frequency of
attendance at a stadium and aided recall, with committed supporters recalling
advertised firms/brands more often than at least one of the other categories in
no less than 16 out of 18 cases (the differences being statistically significant in
seven instances out of 16). Overall the responses to Question 7 for the firms/
brands actually advertised were vastly different to those given for the dummy
brand inserted in the question: no more than 6 per cent of respondents stated
they had seen a non-existent poster. Generally, therefore, the results of this
study match those of Zajonc and others who for many years have alleged that
the relationship between exposure and recall is generally positive, and not of an
inverted U form. However, there is no evidence in the present results of recall
rising at a decreasing rate: recall percentages improve in consequence of
additional exposure, but at a variety of gradients. Also the shapes of the
functions differ:some follow a V pattern; others are approximately constant for
occasional and regular attendance categories, rising sharply for committed
supporters.
False consensus
Figures showing the extents to which fans and their families actually
purchased any of the products supplied by team sponsors are given at the end
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of Table IV, from which it is clear that although very few of the fans
interviewed themselves purchased any of these products, it was always the
case that a substantial number of fans stated that they were encouraged to buy
these products in consequence of the relevant company's sponsorship of the
team in question. Taking pre- and post-match responses together, Table IV
reveals that on average 18 per cent of occasional supporters, 20 per cent of
regular supporters and 20 per cent of committed fans said they were more
likely to buy sponsoring firms' products in consequence of their sponsorship of
the team. It can be seen from Table IV that this influence is greatest for JVC (by
far the most well known and heavily advertised of the three sponsoring
companies), and least for Elonex, which at the time the research was
undertaken was not a high profile computer hardware and software company.
In reply to the question that asked how many of his or her fellow supporters the
person believed purchased the sponsoring firm's products (using the prompt ``1
in 20, 1 in 10, 1 in 50, etc.'') the average Arsenal fan stated (see Table IV) that he
or she thought that around 12 per cent of all other Arsenal fans bought JVC
items, despite the fact that only 5 or 6 per cent of the same sample reported that
they or their close family had actually purchased a JVC product. In other words,
Arsenal fans on average thought that around double the percentage of other
Arsenal supporters bought JVC items than in reality was likely to be the case.
Table IV also reveals that Arsenal fans assumed that a very high percentage
(about 10 per cent) of the general public bought JVC items. Note the large
difference between this figure and the 4 per cent of the control group (see Table
III) that reported having ever purchased a JVC product. Analogous results
emerge from Table IV in relation both to Chelsea fans' perceptions of the
numbers of other Chelsea supporters who drink Coor's beer (a three to four-fold
differential for two of the groups interviewed) and for Wimbledon fans'
estimates of fellow Wimbledon supporters' purchases of Elonex products. And
for both Chelsea and Wimbledon, supporters stated high predictions of the
proportions of the general public they thought purchased sponsoring firms'
products. Again, a comparison of these responses with perceptions held by
members of the control group regarding the percentage of all consumers
buying the companies' products (see Table III) makes it clear that individual
supporters do seem to experience significant false consensus vis-aÁ -vis the
overall popularity of items supplied by the sponsor of their favourite team.
Data from Table IV relating to false consensus is sketched in Figure 1, which
indicates that the shape of the function relating false consensus to the level of
fans' exposure to sponsors' messages appears in the majority of cases to take
the form of a shallow V. This is good news for sponsors, as it seems that
occasional supporters are easily influenced into believing that large numbers of
people buy a sponsoring firm's products. However this ``wears off'' over time,
but reappears among committed fans who have experienced maximum
exposure to sponsors' messages. Thus sports sponsorship seemingly generates
beneficial false consensus effects among both the fully committed fan and the
occasional visitor. Finally, the data was divided into categories for ``younger''
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and ``older'' supporters, according to interviewers' subjective evaluations of
respondents' ages. No significant differences in levels of recall or false
consensus could be discerned between the two age classes.
Conclusion
The results imply that sponsorship is a powerful device for communicating
with spectators at sporting events, and by implication therefore with team
supporters who watch matches at home on television. Sponsorship appears to
Question 3: What percentage of fellow supporters do you think purchase the sponsoring
company’s products?
Pre-match interviews Post-match interviews
15
10
5
OS RS CS
A
C
W
15
10
5
OS RS CS
A
C
W
Question 4: What percentage of the general buying public do you think purchase the 
sponsoring company’s products?
Pre-match interviews Post-match interviews
15
10
5
OS RS CS
A
C
W
15
10
5
OS RS CS
A
C
W
Figure 1.
Relationship between
false consensus and
frequency of attendance
at matches
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be effective not only for enhancing brand/company awareness and recall, but
also for creating among supporters perceptions of widespread use (and hence
the desirability) of sponsoring firms' products. False consensus was evident
among fans of all three teams, and does not seem to depend on whether a team
is doing well or badly. Importantly, substantial false consensus was found
among occasional attenders at matches, reinforcing the usefulness of
sponsorship for strengthening a brand image among the public at large. It is
suggested moreover that because false consensus measures the impact of
exposure, a sponsorship campaign's ability to generate false consensus can be
used as a valuable means of evaluating sponsorship activities.
Independent of false consensus, it is evident from Table I that perimeter
advertising by companies which were not team sponsors (McDonald's, Alliance
and Leicester, etc.) also exerted a greater impact the more often spectators were
exposed to messages. Season ticket holders and others frequently exposed to
perimeter posters exhibited higher levels of recall on average (Question 6) and
were more likely to name perimeter advertisers as examples of product groups
(Question 1). Table II confirms these findings in the case of fans leaving stadia
immediately following a game. The greater the frequency with which a
spectator had visited a ground the higher the probability that the person would
remember specific perimeter posters (Question 5), first unaided and then
following a full prompt. The recall percentages themselves are broadly in line
with those reported in other empirical studies conducted in the recall, perimeter
advertising and sponsorship fields. Nebenzahl and Hornik (1985), for example,
tested the recall of court perimeter advertisements of 344 viewers of the
televised European Basketball Cup, finding that on average 12 per cent of
respondents recalled seeing posters for test product categories unaided, and a
further 19 per cent following a prompt. Of their sample, 9 per cent could name
specific perimeter posters without any prompt. This compares with an all-
product average unprompted named recall from the present study (see Table II)
of just over 8 per cent. Of respondents in the Nebenzahl and Hornik
investigation, 3 per cent claimed to have seen a named (non-existent) dummy
brand. Again this is close to the 3.7 per cent average recorded in the present
work.
Of Arsenal fans, 88 per cent could remember advertisements by JVC, the
team's sponsoring company. This matches closely the findings of Allen (1990)
who reported that companies in hersample of 24 sponsoring firms which
undertook audience surveys typically claimed that around 90 per cent of
audiences were able to recall the name of the sponsoring business. Recall levels
for Coors and Elonex in the present study were lower, but encouraging from the
sponsor's point of view considering that neither brand (at the time of writing) is
anywhere near as generally well known as JVC. Mintel (1990) reported
prompted recall levels of between 55 per cent and 65 per cent for the names of
three brands of cigarette and for a multinational oil company, consequent to
their sponsorship of motor racing (using motor racing as the recall prompt
among members of the public who said they were interested in sport). However,
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spectator recall
311
these levels were only achieved after 14 years of sponsorship so that Coors and
Elonex should not be displeased by the extents of their impacts on people thus
far exposed to their sponsorship activities.
To the extent that false consensus is an important outcome to team sports
sponsorship, further research is necessary to establish its main determinants
within this particular context. For example, do certain types of person possess
internal predispositions towards the acceptance of endorsements by hero
figures that in turn lead to a high degree of false consensus ± irrespective of the
frequency or physical circumstances of exposure? How exactly does peer group
pressure exert its influence on attitudes towards sponsoring companies'
products. What are the effects on false consensus of sponsors' collateral
promotional activities? Sears et al. (1991) suggested that one possible
explanation for the false consensus effect is ``self-exposure'', i.e. the tendency of
people who actively seek out the company of others who share similar interests.
This could account for false consensus among soccer fans in the following
manner. First, an individual supporter might assume that fellow fans possess
similar outlooks, values and interests to those held personally. This mental
association with other fans may then generate feelings of more general
consensus, so that the individuals' estimates of the degree of comparability of
attitude between the person and those with whom he or she chooses to affiliate
might be overestimated ± on the assumption that similarity of interest and
affiliation is reflected in similarity of taste. Hence, positive attitudes towards
the sponsoring company held by the individual supporter are mentally
attributed to fellow fans. To the extent this actually happens, the research issue
arising is how to measure and evaluate the intensity of the average football
spectators' feelings of commonality, like-mindedness, cohesion and community
of interest with other fans of the same team. Another plausible explanation for
false consensus among sports fans (following the work of Marks and Miller,
1987) might be that because passion for the supported team creates positive
individual attitudes towards the sponsoring company, psychological needs for
self-esteem within the person then cause the fan to attribute these same
attitudes to valued peers ± thereby leading to false consensus. Laboratory
research may be necessary to investigate such matters.
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