Customer satisfaction with the entire event experience.

Yoshida, Masayuki

MAZDA Zoom-Zoom Stadium Hiroshima is a new ballpark located in Hiroshima city that serves as the home stadium for the Hiroshima Toyo Carp. The new stadium has received significant attention from the Japanese media because the team's beautiful ballpark houses a number of fantastic facilities. Fans can rent the BBQ seats overlooking the outfield, enjoy the atmosphere of the stadium due to their extremely close proximity to the field from Suna Kaburi seats (a spectacular place to watch players at the field level behind the first and third bases), go to a sport bar under the outfield bleachers, and have a very comfortable seat space in which they can lie down and relax with couches. These examples represent sport marketers' interests in building a theme park-like stadium that is believed to enhance the entertainment value of an event. A sport event's outcome and player performance are not under the control of the team management. Instead of focusing on fans' satisfaction with each event experience, sport marketers have realized that increasing fans' overall satisfaction with the "entire" event experience is a vital practice for cross-buying, positive word-of-mouth, and customer retention. In addition to the Carp, the Chiba Lotte Marines and the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles are specifically renowned for providing superior and memorable entertainment experiences at their home stadiums.

Dr. Masayuki Yoshida

Sport Business Program

Biwako Seikei Sport College

Email: yoshida-m@bss.ac.jp