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Introduction
With the growth of commercial sponsorship and increasing efforts to secure sponsorship rights (Hoek and Gendall, 2002a), the phenomenon of ambush marketing in sports as a "parasitic activity" (Hoek and Gendall, 2002b, p. 72) has gained popularity in diverse manifestations (e.g. Nufer, 2016). In particular, the heightened competition for rights to international sporting events as an attractive marketing communication environment to address a global target group has reduced the number of potential bidders who can fund these rights but has simultaneously raised the number of ambushers because of the increased prestige of such worldwide events (Hoek and Gendall, 2002b). For official sponsors and event owners, this development has created a greater sponsorship fortress to defend exclusive associations with such events. This enhanced sponsorship protection is partly because sponsorship has become a "mainstay of marketing communications" (Cornwell, 2008, p. 41).
It is less surprising that event owners and official sponsors typically regard ambush marketing as immoral and unethical since it threatens and limits the overall ability to recoup the marketing investments made in the event (Payne, 1998). In fact, as part of a broader brand-building marketing program to receive superior brand appeal (e.g. Keller, 2003), marketers of a sponsor brand aim to enrich their financial efforts of a sponsorship engagement to enhance brand knowledge (Gwinner and Eaton, 1999). From a marketing perspective, a successful sponsorship is reflected in the ability to gain a competitive advantage by creating an added value for consumers (e.g. providing less quality uncertainty), so-called brand equity, which results in, among other things, greater consumer confidence in the sponsor brand than in a competitor brand (e.g. Farquhar, 1989). The measurement and management of brand equity generally embody consumer perception and consumer behavior (Silverman et al. , 1999). In particular, consumers' view of a brand, which comprises perceptual drivers (e.g. brand image), affects consumers' brand behavior, which includes relational and intentional outcomes (e.g. brand loyalty) (Esch et al. , 2006). Typically, customer-based brand equity is conceptualized with reference to strong, favorable and unique brand associations and the corresponding brand knowledge that is created in consumer's mind (Keller, 1993; Keller and Lehmann, 2006). According to the associative network theories of cognition, knowledge of a brand is constituted by all the mental representations of...