ABSTRACT
Since the late 1980s, there has been a global trend for governments to reduce public funding in the cultural sector (Ryan and Fahy, 2003; Cooper, 2011; Lindqvist, 2013; Bennett, 2014;), resulting in the provision of economic incentives for arts organizations to seek commercial funding sources by way of sponsorship (Belfiore, 2003; O’Brien, 2010; Allan et al., 2013; Lindqvist, 2013). There is a substantial quantity of literature covering sponsor-linked marketing objectives (Rhonda, 1999; Kotler and Keller, 2012; Mazodier and Merunka, 2012; Wiedmann and Gross, 2013), which can be grouped into five general categories: corporate brand imaging, marketing promotion and sales objectives, media focused on reaching a target market, relationship building both internally and externally, and the personal objectives of the senior manager or CEO (Johnston and Paulsen, 2014:637). It is worth noting that these objectives may not be mutually exclusive.
