Introduction: Among all kinds of sports, football provides a suitable platform for the advertising of big companies. Advertisements are done in various ways such as advertisements inside the stadium, commercials that are aired during games, printed advertisements on clothes and sports equipment, etc. by companies. The present study examines the impact of typography and slogans in environmental advertisements around the football field on customer loyalty with the mediating role of brand preference.
Methodology: In terms of purpose, the research is applied, and in terms of method, it is descriptive-survey, in terms of field implementation, and correlation type. The statistical population of this research is the spectators of football matches in Azadi Stadium in 1402. According to the number of questions in the questionnaire and Steve's (2002) suggestion of 5 to 15 samples per question, 384 people were selected as samples. The research tools included standard loyalty questionnaire (Sahin and Atilgan 2011), standard brand preference questionnaire (Boyle et al. 2011). Also, a researcher-made questionnaire was designed for the variable of visual features including typography and slogan. In order to analyze the data, structural equation modeling was used with SmartPLS3 software.
Findings: The results of the research showed that the visual aspects (typography and slogan) do not directly affect the audience's loyalty to the advertisement made in the stadium. But, according to research results, visual dimensions lead to customer loyalty through brand preference. (t value for the relationship between visual dimensions-loyalty, visual dimensions-brand preference and brand preference-loyalty respectively 1.89, 2.37 and 49.61 and the path coefficient for the mentioned relationships respectively 0.04, 0.11, 0.80 was obtained) and brand preference was determined as a strong mediator.
Discussion and conclusion: considering that environmental advertisements are always exposed to people, the design and content of advertisements are of particular importance. Researchers also believe that typographic factors such as type styles, size and color of letters in combination with other elements such as slogans can significantly increase the effectiveness of advertisements (Kim 2021) and if advertising designers can distinguish between typography, advertising slogans and other effective elements. If they create a proper coordination in advertising, they will achieve a competitive advantage over their competitors and increase consumer preference for their brand, which ultimately leads to loyalty.