Examining sports product consumers purchase intentions and emotional state using a neuromarketing approach

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of traditional marketing and digital marketing methods on psychophysiological activity and purchase intention associated with emotional state in potential buyers. Considering that today's sports consumers are not easily affected by classical marketing strategies, the reactions of sports consumers were examined with television as a traditional method and virtual reality experience as a digital tool in order to examine the effect of emotion with new and different stimuli. As a research method, experimental pre-test, post-test control group model from quantitative research methods was used. The study group of the research consists of a total of 60 sports consumers, 30 women and 30 men with income determined by purposive sampling method, calculated using G*Power 3.1 software to evaluate the adequacy of the sample size. In the study, the data were collected using the 'Affective State' scale developed by Watson et al. (1988) and adapted into Turkish by Gençöz (2000) and the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) was used to measure the purchasing states. The quantitative data of the research were analysed with SPSS Statistics 25.0 software. As a result of the research, significant results were found only in EDA, BVA and RSP parameters in TV\SG group and in EDA, HRV and PNN50 parameters in SG group. No significant results were found in the TV group. Significant findings in positive emotional states before and after the experience were found in TV/SG (p=,049) group, TV (p=,039) group and SG (p=,021) group. It was found that TV and virtual reality experience predicted the purchase intention at the level of 15% in the TV\SG group, and virtual reality experience predicted the purchase intention positively and highly significant at the level of 48%. As a result, virtual reality experience gave higher psychophysiological responses than television experience in activating the emotions of sports consumers and triggering their purchase intentions. Keywords: Sport management, sport marketing, neuromarketing, mood, purchasing, consumer behaviour, virtual reality