Introduction: There are a number of factors affecting consumers' purchase behavior. It is believed that celebrities can affect companies' sale positively or negatively by transferring their image to the endorsed brand product. Regardless of positive effects, scandal, transgression, and any kind of misbehavior may destroy sponsor companies economics. The present paper mainly aimed to explore the effect of doping phenomenon on sport marketing.
Methodology: The present research was a fundamental, exploring, and qualitative according to the results, aim, and data respectively. Interviewees for this paper were selected purposefully among students and graduated of bachelor in physical education and sport sciences program. Internal validity created by hypothesis, worldview, and theoretical orientations of the researcher retrieved the principles and methodology of qualitative researches, and external validity created by enriched data description, inter-case analysis and using specific methods for coding and data analysis. Research reliability was also made by accurate direction of the interviews and data collection and shaping organized processes for implementing and explaining convergent interviews. Qualitative data collecting from eighteen in-depth interviews with undergraduate students of the college of physical education and sport sciences of Islamic Azad University-Central Tehran Branch (IAUCTB) were analyzed in three phases: open coding, axial coding, and selective coding.
Results: 297 open codes were achieved by 18 interviews. Grouping and comparing axial codes in each case, all identified codes were divided in five groups: brand image (athlete and endorsed product brands images), moral reasoning (moral coupling, moral decoupling, and moral rationalization), consumer behavioral consequences (word of mouth, purchase intention, and brand loyalty), attitude change (attitudes change toward athlete and brand), and moral emotions (moral evaluation, contempt, anger, disgust, and sympathy). The proposed qualitative model for the effect of doping phenomenon on sport marketing in Iran illustrated that moral emotions and product brand image affected by the doped athlete brand image and it resulted in attitudes change toward endorser athlete and endorsed brand and negative consumer behavioral consequences, however, moral reasoning strategies emerged by cognitive dissonance might protect consumers behavior from negative effects.