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Meenaghan, Kunkel named winners of 2018 Awards

Woisetschläger, Backhaus, & Cornwell’s JM named "Paper of the Year"

Chicago, IL – The ÂÜÀòÉç¹ÙÍø’s (ÂÜÀòÉç¹ÙÍø) Sport & Sponsorship-Linked Marketing Special Interest Group (SportSIG) has named Tony Meenaghan and Thilo Kunkel its major award winners for 2018.

Meenaghan, a pioneer in the academic study of sponsorship, has been named the winner of the 2018 "Distinguished Career Contributions to the Scientific Understanding of Sport Business Award." Meenaghan serves as Emeritus Professor of Marketing at the Smurfit Business School at University College in Dublin, Ireland and as a Visiting Professor of Marketing in the Lubin School of Business at Pace University in New York. His 1983 paper entitled "Commercial Sponsorship" in the European Journal of Marketing has been cited more than 700 times. Meenaghan’s seminal articles on sponsorship have been cited more than 5,000 times and published in a number of premier journals, including Psychology & Marketing, International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Business Research, and European Journal of Marketing.

Kunkel has been named the winner of the 2018 "Emerging Scholar in Sport Marketing" award. Kunkel, who holds a dual appointment as Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Fox School of Business and Assistant Professor of Sport and Recreation Management in the School of Sport, Tourism, and Hotel Management at Temple University, has published 15 peer-reviewed articles in top sport management journals, including five first author publications in the Journal of Sport Management. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of Sport Management Review and Sport Marketing Quarterly and will be named a North American Society for Sport Management (NASSM) Research Fellow in June.

Published in the Journal of Marketing in 2017, a paper entitled "Inferring corporate motives:

How deal characteristics shape sponsorship perceptions" and authored by David Woisetschläger of Technische Universität Braunschweig, Christoph Backhaus of the Aston Business School, and T. Bettina Cornwell of the University of Oregon has been named the 2018 "Paper of the Year in Sport Marketing." The paper was deemed by judges to have made a significant contribution to the academic study of sponsorship-linked marketing based on its multi-study approach of how the characteristics of a sponsorship agreement, such as contract length, regional proximity of the sponsor, sponsorship fee, and type, affect consumer inferences, attitudes, and behavioral intentions toward the sponsor.

Panels of judges comprised of former SportSIG award winners chose winners in each category from the groups of nominees. Each award winner will be presented with a plaque and honored at a special pre-conference event at Fenway Park prior to the 2018 ÂÜÀòÉç¹ÙÍø Summer Academic Conference in Boston on August, 10, 2018.

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