Physical appearance is the most readily available visual cue in first impression situations and can thus influence the judgments and subsequent behavior of the perciever. Clothing has been singled out by many researchers as a powerful aspect of physical appearance that is highly expressive in nature. However most clothing and first impression studies either have forcefully categorized clothing choices into broad categories (e.g., casual look, sporty look, professional look, etc.) or have been manipulated to best represent the clothing category or self-identity of the wearer. Also, to this day, there has not been any research on the everyday sportswear choices of sports participants and thier communicative aspects. Along these lines, the current study is, based on person perception and social identity theory, an attempt to provide some insight as to the signaling aspects of sportswear as well as how these signals are percieved and interpreted to make first impression judgments by observers. More specifically, the study looks to compare the intentions and human brand personality of sportswear consumers with judgments made by percievers about the social identity, self-identity and personality traits of the wearer in a first impression setting. Repeated Measures of Aanlysis of Variance (ANOVA) was employed to test the differences between self and others perception. Results are discussed, among with the limitations of the study and directions for future research.

The combination of sports and the IT industry has reached a variety of fields, especially in the area of broadcasting technology. Due to diverse preference of viewer and the rising number of channels, broadcasting companies provide differentiated contents to reach a dominant position. Therefore, each broadcasting company has their own strategy to produce contents through special technology skills to hold a top position amongst other companies. According to Eric Rothenbuhler's ‘media niche theory’, when there exists numerous media device with identical resources, the competition to survive between the devices become intense and soon draws a line between the superior and inferior devices which results in eliminating the less viewed media devices out of the race. To secure the uniqueness of the media broadcasting market like the ecosystem, the object is to verify the effectiveness of the convergence of sport broadcasting technology skills and IT technology. Therefore, the media devices and the newly developed technology for video production method were the independent variables. Additionally, the dependent variable was the media effect. Concretely, the media device technology variable set as 3DTV, video production method was set as the variable for FreePointView(FPV) and media effect was separated into arousal and presence level. Recent technology is developed three-dimensionally so that the viewers can feel as close to reality as possible and the most current

The purpose of this study is to examine the impacts of the utilitarian, hedonic and symbolic benefits of consuming sportswear on consumers’ purchase intention and willingness to pay. Also, the potential moderating role of the type of brands (i.e., luxury vs. regular brands) is examined. A multiple regression was performed to examine the impacts of the perceived utilitarian-, hedonic-, and symbolic benefits on individuals’ purchase intention, while controlling for descriptive norm, financial constraints, prior brand attitude and familiarity, prestige sensitivity, fashion consciousness, and demographics. It appeared that respondents who indicated that the advertised sportswear fulfilled their hedonic, utilitarian, and symbolic benefit had greater purchase intention. A log-linear regression analysis was performed to examine the impacts of the perceived utilitarian-, hedonic-, and symbolic benefits on individuals’ willingness to pay for sportswear, while controlling for the descriptive norm, financial constraints, prior brand attitude and familiarity, prestige sensitivity, fashion consciousness, and demographics. As respondents’ willingness to pay was logarithmically transformed in order to correct its skewed bias from the normal distribution, the findings indicated that those who indicated that the utilitarian and symbolic benefits were fulfilled were likely to pay 35% and 19.4%, respectively, more for the sportswear. In order to explore the potential moderating role of the type of brands, we examined the influences of utilitarian, hedonic, and symbolic benefits on purchase intention and willingness to pay for two split samples—one for the two luxury sportswear brands, and the other for the regular sportswear brands. After estimating coefficients for luxury and regular sportswear brands, respectively, a series of z-tests was performed to examine whether the magnitude of coefficients varied across the luxury vs. regular brands. The impacts of hedonic and symbolic benefits on purchase intention were greater for the luxury brands than for the regular brands, whereas the opposite pattern was observed for the utilitarian benefits. Similar patterns of relationships were observed for consumers’ willingness to pay, although the hedonic benefits did not have any significant impact. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed along with future research directions.