Author(s): MANOUCHEHRI, J., Institution: CENTRAL TEHRAN BRANCH, ISLAMIC AZAD UNIVERSITY, Country: IRAN, Abstract-ID: 1552

One of the marketing communications strategies for promoting a brand is sport celebrities' endorsement. Although athlete's endorsement can realized collective aims of commercial corporations, using them is not away from risk. Among many, unethical actions of athlete endorsers (Tiger Woods, Michael Phelps, Michael Vick, Kobe Bryant, Lance Armstrong, and Ray Rice) have made serious problems by involving in vast range of unmoral acts and transgressions. Sponsors are always concerned of experiencing doping related consequences for their brands and products due to the consumers' believes and beliefs on the endorsed product which may be changed by those consequences. Anyway, the main purpose of the present dissertation was to explore and modeling the effect of doping phenomenon on sport marketing in Iran. The present research was implemented by the mixed methodology approach in the community of Iranian undergraduate student of physical education and sport sciences program. Qualitative data were analyzed by inductive reasoning approach to conceptualizing and theorizing, and quantitative data were analyzed by structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the casual model of the detected variables. 297 open codes were achieved by analyzing data of 18 in-depth interviews. Grouping axial codes in each case and comparing them, all gained codes were divided in five groups of brand image, moral reasoning, consumer behavioral consequences, attitude change, and moral emotions. The results of SEM showed acceptable model fit indexes and meaningful relationships between variables. Results also revealed that reasoning strategy of moral rationalization has a moderating effect on the relationship between moral emotions and attitude change toward doped athlete.