Ninth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

Relationship marketing is about retaining stakeholders through the achievements of long-term mutual satisfaction by businesses and their customers. Sport organisations are able to retain their stakeholders by establishing, maintaining and enhancing relationships by engaging in continuous dialogue with their identified stakeholders. Effective communication platforms need to be implemented to achieve this. Social media is thus becoming an ideal platform for the implementation on this strategy. A quantitative descriptive methodology was employed to evaluate the extent to which relationship marketing can be incorporated into the sporting industry. The sample selected for this study are sport organisations within KZN, Durban. The results of the study indicated that although social media is used as a communication tool, other social media platforms should be included in the sport organisations communication strategy and in building effective relationships.