Brand Equity Creation Through Sponsorship of Indigenous Nigerian Cultural Events: A Longitudinal Experimental Investigation

This study employs a longitudinal experimental design to investigate the mechanisms through which corporate sponsorship of indigenous Nigerian cultural events creates brand equity for sponsoring firms, contributing original theoretical and methodological advances to the sports and event sponsorship marketing literature. Cultural event sponsorship in Nigeria, including the Calabar Carnival, Osun-Osogbo Festival, Argungu Fishing Festival, and Kano Durbar, represents a largely underexplored commercial marketing platform relative to its reach and cultural significance. Existing sponsorship theory, dominated by image transfer theory and congruence frameworks, has been validated almost exclusively through sports sponsorship research in Western markets, leaving cultural event sponsorship mechanisms theoretically underdeveloped, particularly in African contexts where cultural event audiences carry distinct identity and community engagement characteristics. Drawing on image transfer theory, self-categorisation theory, and consumer-brand identification literature, the study develops an original cultural sponsorship brand equity model specifying unique pathways through cultural identification, community belonging, and emotional memory formation. A longitudinal experimental design exposes matched consumer panels to cultural event sponsorship across three annual event cycles, measuring brand equity dimensions at multiple time points using validated scales. Mixed-effect longitudinal SEM captures brand equity evolution trajectories. The study delivers original theory on how cultural authenticity moderates sponsorship equity creation and provides Nigerian brand managers with evidence-based cultural sponsorship investment frameworks. Keywords: sponsorship marketing, brand equity, cultural events, longitudinal experiment, Nigeria