All around the world companies spend huge amounts of money on sponsorship, and during the past decades sponsorship has experienced a significant growth, and is also predicted to play an even more significant part as a marketing tool in the future. However, previous research on sponsorship has in general emphasized its effects on individuals. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is to explore sponsorship’s effect on business relation development, and in particular to study its effect on business to business relation development.

This dissertation has an abductive research approach and an exploratory research design which is useful in this sparse investigated subject. Furthermore, to be able to thoroughly explore the subject and be adaptable, the primary data is collected using a case study with qualitative interviews in a semi-structured manner.

The findings indicate sponsorship to affect trust, sincerity, and reputation in the business to business relation development, and also assess commitment and credibility to some extent be affected by sponsorship. However, the findings are only a minor contribution to this uninvestigated field, which needs further investigation. Suggestion for future research could be to do a similar investigation on a larger scale, and with a bigger sample.

Since sponsorship is a growing and complex phenomenon, and this dissertation is limited to how sponsorship affects business to business relation development, the findings can be of interest for companies active in the business to business sphere. Hence, marketers may benefit from the knowledge of how to implement appropriate sponsorship programs, in order to increase the number of relations and to gain competitive advantage.