research paper on personal branding

SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article

Personal branding: interdisciplinary systematic review and research agenda.

• Department of Management and Organization, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Personal branding has become an important concept in management literature in recent years. Yet, with more than 100 scholarly papers published on the concept to date, it has developed into a fragmented area of research with a diversity of definitions and conceptual boundaries. This paper posits that this heterogeneity of extant research impedes theoretical and empirical advancement. To strengthen the foundation for future work, we review the extant literature and offer an integrative model of personal branding. Through our systematic literature review we identify the key attributes of the construct, establish its clarity by comparing it with similar concepts in its nomological network, and suggest the definitions of personal branding and personal brand based on the reviewed literature. Further, we propose a theoretical model of personal branding summarizing the findings from the reviewed papers. The proposed model outlines the trends conducive to personal branding, as well as its drivers, processes, and outcomes. Finally, we discuss ethical implications of personal branding for both scholarly work and practice. In conclusion, we outline a further research agenda for studying personal branding as a critical career and organizational behavior activity in contemporary working environment.

Introduction

Marketing-born and reared, personal branding has made its definitive headway into management science. Sitting at the junction of marketing, sociology, communication, psychology, organizational behavior, and some would claim even accounting ( Vitberg, 2010 ), personal branding has emerged as a means of attaining career success in the context of more temporary employment systems and project based work structures.

Many reasons have prompted the emergence and penetration of the concept—personal branding—into the management discourse. Among the key is a widespread shift of the responsibility for employees' careers from organizations to individuals ( Arthur and Rousseau, 1996 ; Arthur, 2014 ; Greenhaus and Kossek, 2014 ). Indeed, business changes in traditionally stable sectors push thousands of lifetime workers out of jobs, e.g., because of the “greening” of the energy sector, or massive job cuts in the call centers, and because of the advances in artificial intelligence. More frequent career transitions require expanding and creating new networks of contacts, which, in turn, predicate more frequent personal rebranding activities ( Schlosser et al., 2017 ). With the technological advances bringing about the ease of communication across the Internet and numerous social media platforms, “careers have become personal brands that need to be managed in a virtual age” ( Gioia et al., 2014 ). When Peters (1997) wrote that everyone is a CEO of his or her own company, it must have been prescient to the labor market situation of today, where careers are boundaryless (psychological contract wanes) ( Arthur et al., 2005 ), individuals are as good as their last gig (portfolio careers) ( Cawsey, 1995 ), and “you are your own enterprise” (the need to be intelligent in career decisions) ( Arthur et al., 2017 ).

Although personal branding originated in the field of marketing ( Lair et al., 2005 ), there are now more than a hundred published papers on the topic across a range of disciplines. These papers contribute to the growing body of literature that aims to define personal branding, explain how it works, and to conceptualize it in relation to various input and output variables. Yet, this body of literature is diverse and disconnected, without any attempt so far to bring scholarly efforts together toward a more integrated understanding. No commonly accepted academic definitions or theoretical models exist. As the voice of popular press on personal branding becomes increasingly pervasive, painting a consistent picture that standard work is obsolete, that self-fulfillment is a sine qua non of success, and that organizational and personal interests are diverging ( Vallas and Cummins, 2015 ), science needs to step forward to corroborate or refute such allegations. With this literature review we aim to fill this gap.

We analyze 100 papers on personal branding published in journals representing various disciplines, with the purpose to, firstly, synthesize all definitions of personal branding stemming from different disciplines and fields of studies, and to propose a new definition that integrates multidisciplinary knowledge about the concept. Secondly, we establish the personal branding's construct clarity, by positioning personal branding as a distinct construct alongside other established concepts related to managing perceptions of others toward achieving a specific objective, such as image, fame, or self-promotion. Thirdly, we propose a conceptual model of personal branding based on the reviewed literature outlining successive inputs, processes and outputs. Finally, a future research agenda is laid out by positioning personal branding as one of the essential human activities for maintaining sustainable work and employment.

Methodology

This field of knowledge being fragmented and scarce, we conducted a systematic literature review, applying wide criteria to include all the extant academic research on personal branding. A systematic approach intends to remove subjectivity and bring about cohesion through the synthesis of available information. To ensure a comprehensive approach and minimize the bias, where applicable, we followed the PRISMA guidelines for systematic reviews, suggested by Moher et al. (2009) , related to defining the research question, setting the search parameters, extracting and appraising the relevant data, and synthesizing the findings. We followed the literature selection process used by Mol et al. (2015) , followed by the “snowballing” technique ( Greenhalgh and Peacock, 2005 ). An initial search by topic and title on Web of Science™ on April 1, 2018 returned 1183 results from all databases after applying the following restrictions: TOPIC OR TITLE: (personal brand*), Refined by: Research Domains: (Social Sciences OR Arts Humanities) AND Document Types: (Article OR Review) AND Research Areas: (Business Economics OR Psychology OR Communication OR Social Sciences Other Topics OR Sociology), Timespan: All years, Search language = Auto. Most of the articles in the topic search were related to the marketing studies of product branding, and, therefore, were excluded, as they were not relevant to the research topic of personal branding. Similarly, we did not consider non-academic papers and patents. Removing the duplicates across the topic and title search and studying the abstracts, 96 references were selected for full-text analysis. To ensure that any unindexed references are included, additional Boolean searches on the keywords “personal brand*” were carried out on EBSCO Business Source Complete restricting it by peer-reviewed publications only and on Google Scholar, returning 13 and 19 additional original references respectively; top 250 hits were manually reviewed in each search. After analyzing the full texts of the articles, 44 references were excluded for the following reasons: (a) for lacking academic rigor albeit published in peer-reviewed journals ( N = 16), (b) for lacking relevance to the topic of the study ( N = 14), and (c) for being in a language that the researcher did not know ( N = 10), and for the inability to find full text articles ( N = 4). A manual search in the reference lists of the selected articled resulted in 16 additional references added to the list. Conference proceedings and papers were included. As a result, this current review is based on the analysis of full text of 100 academic publications. This process is graphically explained in Figure 1 . Each article was subsequently analyzed in depth with the results coded under the corresponding category titles, main ones being definition, theory, model, methods, population, inputs, processes, outputs, study design, primary social media, future research recommendations.

Figure 1 . Review methodology process.

Considering that the first academic papers on the topic were published in 2005, the review period for this paper was set as 2005–2017. Since 2005, there has been an uptake in scholarly writing on the subject, and the growths in academic research and writing on the topic of personal branding follows an exponential trend line ( R 2 = 0.7416) as illustrated in Figure 2 .

Figure 2 . Total number of academic publications ( n = 98) by year included in current review. The 2018 publications ( n = 2) are excluded from this graph to prevent distortion of the exponential trend line, as the year is not over yet.

As our review reveals, research on personal branding is progressively moving from conceptualization to empirical studies, with a preference for qualitative methods. Out of the 100 reviewed papers, 34 are conceptual. 42 papers used qualitative methods, 17—quantitative, and seven used a mixed-method approach. Supplementary Table 1 lists all the reviewed papers in chronological order, together with the definition of personal branding or a personal brand , the nature of conducted research and the populations studied.

Construct Clarity and Definitions Personal Branding

Looking through the literature, we found that despite a substantial number of academic articles on the topic of personal branding suggesting a diversity of definitions, there is little agreement on the exact boundaries of the concept. Therefore, as the first step, it deems necessary to determine the construct clarity and position it in the field of related concepts. Then, we elucidate the definitions of personal branding and personal brand , clearly demarcating them as self-standing constructs. We conclude this part with the analysis of the theoretical premises for personal branding that the earlier authors based their research in.

Construct Clarity

While the authorship of the term “personal branding” in 1997 is contended by Montoya and Vandehey (2002) and Peters (1997) , some researchers indicate the origins of the concept either in Goffman's work in 1960s ( Lorgnier and O'Rourke, 2011 ; Khedher, 2015 ; Philbrick and Cleveland, 2015 ) or in the 1980s in marketing studies ( Vallas and Cummins, 2015 ). Despite these early attempts, the academic work to research personal branding as a self-standing concept only began in early 2000s.

Shepherd (2005) reviewed the popular literature on the subject and acknowledged wide acceptance of the term “personal branding.” Some researchers use the term “self-branding” ( Gandini, 2016 ), which is synonymous to personal branding. Still, this review finds that the term “personal branding” is more customary and accepted. Parmentier et al. (2013) made an attempt at the conceptual rapprochement among different definitions, stating that despite various names “the premise of much of what has been written is that some product branding concepts are sufficient for understanding how people can position themselves to be successful in any career pursuit” (p. 373). We hope to contribute further to greater construct clarity for personal branding. In order to do so, we followed the process suggested by Podsakoff et al. (2016) . We present our findings in the next four sub-sections: (1) analysis of the definitions encountered in the reviewed literature; (2) study of the related concepts in the nomological network of personal branding as informed by this literature; (3) synthesis of the key attributes of personal branding from the reviewed definitions and analyzing presence or absence of the identified attributes in the related concepts; and (4) defining personal branding and a personal brand .

Heterogeneity of Extant Definitions

Although the definitions encountered in the studied articles are diverse, they can be grouped according to the underlying theoretical approach. We have identified two main categories of those definitions: Those based in the marketing theory and those sprouting from the studies of self-presentation behaviors. The “marketing” definitions (see, for example, Lair et al., 2005 ; Marwick and boyd, 2011 ; Bendisch et al., 2013 ) tend to use words like “product,” “buyer,” “seller,” “market,” “added value,” “promise,” “differentiation,” or “meeting customer needs.” They liken personal branding to a product branding process, using similar terminology and directly applying marketing principles. The “self-presentation” definitions (see, for example, Parmentier et al., 2013 ; Molyneux, 2015 ; Schlosser et al., 2017 ) tend to include such words as “impression,” “reputation,” “individual's strengths,” “uniqueness,” “image,” “self-promotion,” or “identity.” These definitions position personal branding as a person-centric activity, focused on managing how others view the individual. Although some papers use the definitions suggested by other scholars, there is no commonly accepted way to define personal branding in either approach. Also, we find that the existing definitions, provided in Supplementary Table 1 , lack either in comprehensiveness, e.g., “active process of synthesizing and packaging a personal brand to target customers, prospective employers, and an online network of colleagues” ( Cederberg, 2017 , p. 1), rigor, e.g., “planned process in which people make efforts to market themselves” ( Khedher, 2015 , p. 20), or both, e.g., “how we want to be perceived by employers, potential employers, clients, professional peers, and others in a way that will boost short- and long-term career prospects” ( Evans, 2017 , pp. 271–272).

Related Concepts

There are seven related concepts, chosen for this exercise, as they were consistently mentioned alongside with personal branding in the reviewed literature. They belong to the same group for the reason that they deal with perceptions of others of an individual. However, the agency of managing those perceptions, the vector of action, the nature of methods and techniques, and their intent are different, which gives way to distinguishing them one from the others. Zinko and Rubin (2015) in their work on personal reputation have provided a useful overview of several concepts under consideration, including reputation, status, image, fame, celebrity, pedigree, legitimacy, credibility, branding, and impression management. In our study, we have chosen the following most relevant seven related concepts with their definitions, as they were most frequently mentioned in relation to personal branding:

• Human branding . Close et al. (2011) defined human brand as “persona, well-known or emerging, who are the subject of marketing, interpersonal, or inter-organizational communications” (p. 923). This concept comes from marketing, building upon the branding literature and extending it from products to people ( Thomson, 2006 ).

• Impression management . Kowalski and Leary (1990) defined impression management as “the process by which individuals attempt to control the impressions others form of them” (p. 34). It is the “vehicle by which professional image construction occurs” ( Roberts, 2005 ).

• Self-promotion . While Molyneux (2015) placed an equation mark between personal branding and self-promotion, we would like to disambiguate the two. Bolino et al. (2016) view self-promotion as a distinct impression management technique, when actors “are inclined to highlight their accomplishments, take credit for positive outcomes, name-drop important others, and downplay the severity of negative events to which they are connected” (p. 384).

• Image . Roberts (2005) provided an authoritative point of view on professional image, also influencing our understanding of personal branding in considering the desired and perceived components of the personal brand (see further section on Brand Architecture ). Yet, we would like to extract the “professional” part from her definition, given that image construction may occur outside of the organizational setting, so that it becomes “the aggregate of key constituents' < …> perceptions of one's competence and character” (p. 687).

• Reputation . Several authors liken reputation to a personal brand ( Noble et al., 2010 ; Schlosser et al., 2017 ), yet there are distinct differences between these concepts. Zinko and Rubin (2015) , noting that the research on reputation is not yet well-developed, propose their own definition of it: “a perceptual identity formed from the collective perceptions of others, which is reflective of the complex combination of salient personal characteristics and accomplishments, demonstrated behavior, and intended images presented over some period of time as observed directly and/or reported from secondary sources, which reduces ambiguity about expected future behavior” (p. 218). While we would disagree with the word “intended” in this definition, as reputations can be formed in the most unintended manners, this is the most robust one we have found.

• Fame . Zinko and Rubin (2015) suggested that fame equals reputation less predictability, since fame can be brought about by singular events, and later developed into reputation through repeated behavioral displays.

• Employee Branding . While not often mentioned in the literature on personal branding, this concept is very close to the one under study, differing only in few key attributes. Miles and Mangold (2004) conceptualized employee branding within the framework of internal marketing, and defined it as “the process by which employees internalize the desired brand image and are motivated to project the image to customers and other organizational constituents” (p. 68).

Clarifying the Construct of Personal Branding: Key Attributes

We will now proceed to the discussion of each of the five first-level attributes (strategic, positive, promise, person-centric, and artifactual), which were drawn from the definitions found in the reviewed literature.

Several definitions used in the reviewed literature specifically point out that personal branded activities are targeted , i.e., directed at a defined audience ( Labrecque et al., 2011 ; Cederberg, 2017 ), and programmatic , i.e., designed as a series of coordinated activities ( Lair et al., 2005 ; Manai and Holmlund, 2015 ). There are some definitions using the word strategically directly ( Marwick and boyd, 2011 ; Kleppinger and Cain, 2015 ; Nolan, 2015 ; Lee and Cavanaugh, 2016 ). For certain roles, strategic personal branding is a prerequisite. For example, Bendisch et al. (2013) discussed closing the gap between the desired identity, image, and reputation for CEO brands from the stakeholder and organizational perspectives, requiring a planful and deliberate approach. Gandini (2016) , studying digital freelance professionals in London and Milan, likens strategic personal branding to a profitable form of investment of time, labor, and relationships, essential in a reputation economy. Such concepts as “fame” actively lack these characteristics, and they are not essential for “self-promotion,” “reputation,” or “image.” Bolino et al. (2016) note that while impression management can be strategic and intentional, it also can be “unconscious and habitual” (p. 378), hence we conclude that the programmatic aspect of impression management may be missing.

The definitions of personal branding are consistent in the positive intentionality of personal branding. Authors concur that its main objective is to “establish favorable impressions” ( Lee and Cavanaugh, 2016 ), be “appealing” ( Omojola, 2008 ), and “valuable, reliable or desirable” ( De la Morena Taboada, 2014 ). We use the term “positive” as “desired by the target audience,” as indeed, there may be cases where personal branders would want to be associated with characteristics that are in ill regard by the societal norms, such as in research of male sex workers by Phua and Caras (2008) . From this perspective, we can argue that “positive” also could be “drawing attention,” following the line of reasoning that one of the objectives of personal branding is to differentiate oneself in the emerging attention economy ( Hearn, 2008b ). The inability to create a positive desired image in the minds of the target audience or a mismatch between the goal and perception is a branding failure. Labrecque et al. (2011) identified two types of personal branding failures: Insufficient branding (e.g., lack of content, failure to emphasize the desired message, etc.) and misdirected branding (e.g., inconsistencies with the brand identity, addressing wrong audiences, etc.). They offer specific advice to increase the positive attribute of a personal brand: “Reinforcement for optimal branding, augmentation for insufficient branding, and deleting or diffusing for misdirected branding” (p. 47).

The marketing nature of the personal branding construct implies the idea of signaling a promise to the target audience ( Tulchinsky, 2011 ; Philbrick and Cleveland, 2015 ). Parmentier et al. (2013) , studying positioning of personal branding in the organizational field of modeling, concluded that effective signaling of one's human, social, and cultural capital depends on successfully fitting into a specific organizational field ( cf . product brand points of parity) and standing out from the competition in that field ( cf . product brand points of differentiation). In contrast to product brands, standing out in personal branding is achieved not by having additional attributes or characteristics but having higher levels of those qualities, valued by the target audience. The most adjacent concepts related to this attribute are human branding ( Thomson, 2006 ) and employee branding ( Miles and Mangold, 2004 ), both of which are built on the foundational purpose of a brand to convey a promise. Human branding is a generic concept, which may lack agency in cases when, for instance, an advertising agency brands a movie character, rather than the actor playing that character. Employer branding lacks reflexivity as that work is conducted top-down, guided by the overall organizational objectives.

Person-Centric

This attributes comprises three second-level attributes: agency, reflective, and differentiation. The principle of agency supposes an active involvement of the subject of personal branding into the process: “Workers are encouraged to view themselves as entrepreneurs within corporate employment or while seeking corporate employment” ( Lair et al., 2005 , p. 316). While human branding, employee branding, fame, and reputation may occur without the subject's volition, personal branding demands the individual's involvement. Since personal branding requires agency and intentionality, persistent claims that “everybody has a personal brand” ( Rampersad, 2008 , p.34) are misguided, calling for a more accurate “everybody has a reputation.” Reflexivity highlights the exteriorization processes that are central to personal branding, where the subjects are required to identify individual characteristics prior to engaging in positioning of their personal brands to the outer world ( Wee and Brooks, 2010 ). We have already highlighted that human branding and employee branding may lack reflexivity as an attribute due to low agency. Finally, differentiation refers to building a personal brand around a set of characteristics that are unique and desirable by the target audience ( Parmentier et al., 2013 ). Studying personal branding of professional golfers, Hodge and Walker (2015) discuss how differentiation, or “standing out” from the competition, allowed those sportsmen to access valuable career opportunities.

Artifactual

Both personal branding and core marketing literature points out artifactual nature of branding. Examples of artifacts in personal branding go back to embroidering monograms on shirts, personalized stationary and visiting cards, or a signature at the bottom of a painting. Khedher (2015) specifically attributes artifactual displays of impression management behaviors to personal branding activities. Scholars are unanimous regarding the need for a narrative ( Brooks and Anumudu, 2016 ; Eagar and Dann, 2016 ; Pera et al., 2016 ) and related imagery ( van der Land et al., 2016 ; Holton and Molyneux, 2017 ). Several papers specifically studied the artifacts of personal branding efforts, such as narrated selfies ( Eagar and Dann, 2016 ), LinkedIn photos ( van der Land et al., 2016 ), Instagram photos ( Geurin-Eagleman and Burch, 2016 ), YouTube videos ( Chen, 2013 ), and ePortfolios ( Jones and Leverenz, 2017 ). Concepts like reputation or impression management do not necessarily require a coherent story or associated artifacts.

Juxtaposing the identified attributes with other related concepts, we determine these attributes necessary and sufficient ( Podsakoff et al., 2016 ) to demarcate the construct of personal branding as self-standing and distinct. The overview of the attributes of personal branding, compared to related concepts, is depicted in Table 1 .

Table 1 . Attributes of personal branding compared to related concepts.

Defining Personal Branding

Having identified the core attributes of the construct in question, we proceeded to elucidating its definition. Guided by the characteristics of a “good definition” ( Suddaby, 2010 ), we propose the following way to define personal branding :

Personal branding is a strategic process of creating, positioning, and maintaining a positive impression of oneself, based in a unique combination of individual characteristics, which signal a certain promise to the target audience through a differentiated narrative and imagery .

In the reviewed literature, the authors would choose to base their work either on the definition of personal branding as a process, or a personal brand as a product, or both. Hence, we offer a definition of a personal brand as well. Drawing on the definition of personal branding and one provided by Ottovordemgentschenfelde (2017) , we proceed to define a personal brand :

Personal brand is a set of characteristics of an individual (attributes, values, beliefs, etc.) rendered into the differentiated narrative and imagery with the intent of establishing a competitive advantage in the minds of the target audience .

Theoretical Foundations of Personal Branding

Personal branding, being a multidisciplinary construct, employs a wide range of distinct theories to explain it. We have grouped the theories used in the reviewed literature into four large categories: sociological, marketing, psychological, and economic.

Sociological Theories

The majority of the authors, totaling 38 papers, used sociological theories to explain the concept of personal branding. Goffman's (1959) dramaturgical perspective is most often referenced (19 papers), positioning personal branding as both a backstage activity (e.g., reflection, sense-making, etc.) and onstage performance (impression management, feedback-seeking, etc.) to influence the perceptions of others. Meyrowitz (1990) extended the dramaturgical theory into wider social and digital contexts (cited by one paper). While Goffman's work on self-presentation and social interactions is a predominant way to understand the activities around personal branding, it does not explain fully the interactions in the digital world, and it may overlook some ways to understand the outcomes of personal branding.

As an extension to Goffman's work, specific research on impression management by Kowalski and Leary (1990) , Baumeister (1982) , Gardner and Martinko (1988) , and Schlenker (1980) was mentioned in three papers. Linked to the backstage activities, four papers rely on the reflexivity theories of Giddens (1991) , Beck (1992) and Adams (2003 , 2006 ) attempt to explain how individuals build own identities in the fast-changing technological world. Five papers used Bourdieu's (1993) theories to explain accumulation of social and cultural capital in specific organizational fields, highlighting that our identities are shaped by the habitus and we are not in full control over them. Finally, Du Gay's enterprising culture theory ( Gay and Salaman, 1992 ; Du Gay, 1996 ) is used in six papers to position personal branding as a new type of labor in the post-Fordist era, working identities forged into “enterprising selves” or “flexible subjectivities.”

Marketing Theories

Shepherd (2005) noted that Kotler was first to expand the field of marketing beyond the product. Hughes (2007) , Neale et al. (2008) , and Speed et al. (2015) attributed the emergence of personal branding as a separate discipline to Keller's distinguishing the “small b” approach to branding, referring to product branding only, and the “large b,” extending the science of branding to services, organizations, and people. The work of Aaker (1997) on brand personality and brand identity is most often referenced in research on personal branding (seven papers). Thomson (2006) contributed to the stream of thinking around human brands. Eagar and Dann (2016) suggest three approaches to the self as a human brand: (1) “consumerist”—viewing human brands from the position of consumers, (2) “reputational”—assuming a passive approach in having a brand, and (3) “agency”—proactively creating and managing one's personal brand. An overwhelming majority of the extant literature on personal branding subscribes to the latter two approaches: understanding the brand equity, or the reputation, and managing the desired projected image. Overall, marketing theories were used in 17 papers.

Psychological Theories

Eleven papers used psychological theories to explain personal branding. Four papers ( Shepherd, 2005 ; Gioia et al., 2014 ; Molyneux, 2015 ; Holton and Molyneux, 2017 ; Schlosser et al., 2017 ) highlight the role of personal branding in identity formation, situating their thinking in the works of Mead (1934) , Erikson (1968) , Turner and Oakes (1986) , Ibarra (1999) , and others. Schlosser et al. (2017) even likened the narrative approach to the concept of personal branding, which “reflects how executives project their identity to others in order to demonstrate their leadership fit” (p. 574). Psychological needs were referenced in five papers, ranging from basic need for self-fulfillment and self-esteem ( Shepherd, 2005 ; Gioia et al., 2014 ; Zinko and Rubin, 2015 ) researched by Cohen (1959) and Baumeister and Leary (1995) to non-social motives, as suggested by Labrecque et al. (2011) : need for power, to pass time and provide entertainment, and need for advocacy. Finally, Shepherd (2005) and Khedher (2015) suggest that personal branding can be viewed as a self-development tool, grounding their conclusions in Schon's reflective practitioner theory ( Schon, 1984 ).

Economic Theories

The economic theories, used only in nine papers, help us understand the macro environment, in which personal branding takes place. There are a variety of attempts to describe the current economic conditions shaping social interactions: flexible accumulation ( Harvey, 1990 ), controlled discourse ( Andrejevic, 2007 ), emotional capitalism ( Illouz, 2007 ), leading to the emergence of reputation economy ( Gandini, 2016 ). Hernando and Campo (2017) used Freeman's multi-stakeholder approach to describe the complexity of brand positioning. Spence's signaling theory ( Spence, 1973 ) was used in two papers to reflect communication of unique characteristics to target audiences in imperfect markets.

Thus, we conclude that comprehensive understanding of personal branding lies on four broad social sciences: sociology, marketing, psychology, and economics. Driven by certain needs and shaping own identity (psychological perspective), an individual engages in online and offline interactions with others, trying to manage their perceptions of him/her to gain a certain benefit (sociological perspective). There are specific principles and practices of creating, positioning, and managing own brand (marketing perspective), and these activities are predicated by larger shifts in the organizational and societal contexts (economic perspective).

Trends, Drivers, Processes, and Outcomes of Personal Branding

Research on the topic is fragmented, so we used a systematic approach to synthesize the knowledge from the reviewed literature, categorizing the findings into trends, conducive to personal branding, its drivers, related processes, and outcomes. We proceed to discuss these five aspects of personal branding in separate sections below.

Trends Conducive to Personal Branding

There are three broad categories of trends that are conducive or preclusive of personal branding activities, found in the reviewed literature: Economic, societal, and technological.

Economic (6 Papers)

The basic economic premise of an imperfect market ( Hernando and Campo, 2017 ) is already a strong foundation to argue for the need to signal own value to the target audience. Another economic premise for personal branding relates to the economic reality of the modern world. The reviewed literature refers to these conditions as “era of post-Fordism” ( Vallas and Cummins, 2015 ), “knowledge economy” ( Gandini, 2016 ), “sharing economy” ( Pera et al., 2016 ), or “era of consumer-to-consumer” ( Chen, 2013 ), and most concur that the marketplace for skills has become much more demanding, coupled with increasing employment uncertainty ( Cederberg, 2017 ; Holton and Molyneux, 2017 ) and the rise of portfolio careers ( Gandini, 2016 ), all of which lead to personal branding as an effective career strategy in the new economic environment. Abrate and Viglia (2017) note that “parties operating in sharing economy platforms are incentivized to use reputation-signaling mechanisms to maximize the likelihood of a successful transaction.” (p. 4). Schlosser et al. (2017) conducted their research on career rebranding specifically within the framework of modern career agency, seen as a response to the economic changes. On the other side of the imperfect labor market, employers embrace digital as well, which results in emergence of such practices as, for instance, cybervetting ( Berkelaar, 2014 ). In a similar vein, research by van der Land et al. (2016) shows that effective management of own picture in the LinkedIn profile may lead to better chances of getting a job interview.

Societal (4 Papers)

Several researchers have attributed the societal shifts to emergence of personal branding. The generational divide and novel lifestyle choices ( Harris and Rae, 2011 ) have contributed to the need of self-promotion, both at work and in private life. Constructing a public image, previously a prerogative of celebrities, today is available to “everyday person” ( Eagar and Dann, 2016 ). Researching social media consumption on YouTube, Chen (2013) maintains that amateur individuals are embracing social media for personal branding purposes. It is noteworthy that different cultures may have varying degrees of appreciation of personal branding practices. For instance, North American blogger communities are more discerning and skeptical of someone's self-promotion activity and they place a greater value on knowledge dissemination, while Middle Eastern personal brander communities are “more praiseworthy, accepting, and less critical of the personal brander efforts at self-promotion and increasing social capital” ( Saleem and Iglesias Bedós, 2013 , p. 20). Vallas and Christin (2018) , having compared the attitudes toward personal branding among the US and French freelance web journalists, report that the French journalists are more wary of such practices than their American counterparts.

Technological (6 Papers)

There is a widespread consensus that the key driver for personal branding is the ease of access to technology, especially the Web 2.0 tools, such as social media and blogs ( Harris and Rae, 2011 ; Holton and Molyneux, 2017 ). “If once personal reputation was considered crucial for celebrities and politicians, online tools have allowed personal reputation to become an important marketing task for everyday people” ( Pera et al., 2016 , p. 45). While technology facilitates personal branding, it also makes it more difficult to differentiate oneself in “hyper-saturated and hyper-fluxed media environment” ( Ottovordemgentschenfelde, 2017 , p. 65), where digital media skills become an additional kind of brand identity. Green (2016) concurs, having performed research in professional sports area, that, when other “sporting” characteristics are similar, an online profile creates differentiation.

Drivers of Personal Branding

We have identified two broad groups of drivers pertaining to the individual doing own personal branding: Individual and role/industry-related. These factors may explain why, how, and for what reason persons engage in personal branding activities.

Individual (5 Papers)

Driven by the need for a positive personal reputation ( Zinko and Rubin, 2015 ), comprised of the need for self-esteem, need to belong and desire for rewards, certain personal characteristics, such as attributes and values, make it easier or more difficult for individuals to engage in personal branding. Pihl (2013) performed a netnographic study of three professional Swedish bloggers, which found that individual characteristics aligned with their personal brand enhance its impact and effectiveness. Lorgnier and O'Rourke (2011) identified specific skills required for personal branding: technological, metacognitive, creative and critical. Therefore, we may hypothesize that individuals with superior digital skills, who are able to discover own points of competitive differentiation and creatively turn them into compelling narrative and imagery, while doing that strategically and socially-appropriately, have greater chances of professional and personal success. In addition to that, cultural and social capitals predicate the required effort and the effectiveness of the personal branding process ( Khedher, 2015 ).

Role/Industry-Related (12 Papers)

A significant portion of literature links personal branding with the requirements, expectations, and/or limitations of specific roles and industries. Some authors make general statements that professions of today require promoting self via personal branding ( Bridgen, 2011 ; Harris and Rae, 2011 ), while others discuss specific jobs and industries. We conclude that industries with higher degree of transparency, such as sports ( Green, 2016 ) or journalism ( Brems et al., 2016 ; Holton and Molyneux, 2017 ), are more conducive to individual personal branding. At the company level, Sturdy and Wright (2008) point out that organizations adopting an enterprise model may be more lenient or even supportive of personal branding. Amoako and Okpattah (2018) , having conducted a study on sales executives in the insurance and FMCG sectors in Ghana, suggest that companies investing in personal branding of their employees may gain substantial financial benefits. As the existing research has been focused on particular populations, we observe that those personal branders belong to industries or roles conducive or indifferent to an individual's engaging in personal branding activities. It is logical to assume that some industries or roles, such as defense or police agents, may be less conducive to personal branding or even precluding of such activities. We expose the specific occupations studied, categorized by the degree of conduciveness for personal branding and the type of studied population, in Table 2 .

Table 2 . Samples studied in the reviewed literature, categorized by the degree of conduciveness for personal branding and the type of studied population.

While a greater number of articles studying executives, firm owners and high-profile political figures was expected, since much management research often begins with the upper echelons, the amount of papers on journalists' personal branding was surprising. We attribute such interest to the fact that journalism of one of the areas most impacted by the advances of social media, with the role and career of journalists currently being in a flux ( Holton and Molyneux, 2017 ). It is worthwhile noting that, according to Brems et al. (2016) , freelance journalists are more likely to engage in self-promotion and share personal information than employed journalists. This points to differences in personal branding behaviors even within a specific professional area.

Processes of Personal Branding

Several models are discussed in the reviewed literature regarding the process of personal branding, with a total of 29 papers. Some researchers quote the models from the popular literature, such as Aruda's “extract, express, and exude” ( Chen, 2013 , p. 334), or the three-step model by McNally and Speak: “(1) identify the areas where your competencies matter; (2) examine your standards and values; (3) define your style” ( Gander, 2014 , p. 101). Brooks and Anumudu (2016) examined the 10-step model used by the consultancy PriceWaterhouseCoopers to teach personal branding. Other researchers design own approaches such as Resnick et al.'s (2016) “4Ps” self-branding model. Drawing on our analysis of the reviewed papers, we single out the key processes involved in personal branding: raising self-awareness, needs analysis and positioning, constructing brand architecture, self-reflection and feedback-seeking, and sense-making.

Raising Self-Awareness

Self-awareness, introspection and critical skills ( Lorgnier and O'Rourke, 2011 ) are viewed as essential for discovering the “inner self,” a combination of self-identity, personal values and beliefs, self-image, and personal aims ( Kucharska, 2017 ). Self-discovery is the most common first assignment in personal branding courses, discussed in the reviewed literature, and scholars seem to agree that self-awareness is the initial step of the personal branding process ( García Montero et al., 2014 ; Philbrick and Cleveland, 2015 ; Cederberg, 2017 ).

Needs Analysis and Positioning

Shepherd (2005) draws our attention to the apparent misalignment between the consumer-oriented approach, advocating for ignoring the “true self” and focusing only on the needs of the target audience, and the personal branding researchers, who advise not to change oneself and build upon individual strengths. He suggests a consensus through engaging in self-reflection vis-à-vis the target audience and the competitors. Two later studies empirically tested applicability of marketing concepts to personal branding in terms of focusing on the target audience and choosing the right positioning strategy. Parmentier et al. (2013) found that to achieve and signal one's capital in the desired organizational field it is necessary to comply with the principles of brand positioning (establishing both points of parity and points of differentiation) and person brand positioning (both fitting into expectations of the field and standing our from competitors in the field). The need for differentiation or uniqueness is highlighted in several papers ( Chen, 2013 ; Gander, 2014 ; Cederberg, 2017 ). Such strategies may be specific to various organizational fields and roles. For instance, Parmentier and Fischer (2012) claim that specialization, high-level playing opportunities, revealing publically visible cues about self, and interaction with the audience are key personal branding strategies for professional athletes.

Impression management is the vehicle for positioning the personal brand ( Labrecque et al., 2011 ; Khedher, 2015 ), which can be achieved through a combination of online and offline strategies. Online activities get the greatest focus from the personal branding scholars, given the changing nature of the economic and social environment and the shift toward digital work; “branding is inevitable when participating in an online environment” ( Labrecque et al., 2011 , p. 48). Social media and Web 2.0 technology most often discussed in the reviewed literature are Twitter (13 papers), Facebook (6 papers), LinkedIn (5 papers), Instagram (3 papers), blogs (3 papers), and others (5 papers), such as MySpace, About.me, YouTube. As the role of social media in individual career management increases, digital storytelling also comes to the fore as a powerful signaling mechanism of one's worth in the labor market ( Jones and Leverenz, 2017 ).

Constructing Brand Architecture

In studying professional image , Roberts (2005) suggested two facets of the construct: Desired professional image and perceived professional image . We adhere to this line of thinking. A personal brand comprises two key elements: Desired self and perceived identity. Desired self can be understood through the dynamic approach to studying work identity ( Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003 ; Alvesson et al., 2008 ). While McCall and Simmons (1978) conceptualized idealized self as how individuals perceived themselves according to internal values and needs, we posit desired self as how individuals want to be perceived by their target audience. Creating the personal brand is, therefore, similar to what Ibarra and Petriglieri (2010) described as “identity play,” understood as “the crafting and provisional trial of immature (i.e., as yet unelaborated) possible selves” (p. 13).

While most of the papers, discussing personal branding processes, focus on constructing and positioning desired self, only seven articles explicitly address the issue of the audience's perspective, or perceived identity , i.e., how in reality one's personal brand is perceived by others (e.g., Cederberg, 2017 ). In fact, we see this part of personal branding as the most important, as perceptions of others determine their actions toward us.

Gandini (2016) described personal branding as acquisition of reputation, so it is important to understand the concept of personal brand as both what we intend to project to the target audience (desired self), and that audience's reaction to it (perceived identity). Desired self and perceived identity will have all the brand image features, derived from the marketing science: attributes, attitudes, benefits ( Keller, 1993 ), and personality ( Aaker, 1997 ), which Manai and Holmlund (2015) refer to as “brand core,” comprised of core identity (education, skills, personality, values, experience, etc.), extended identity (abilities, attitudes, cultural aspects, etc.) and value proposition (functional, emotional, self-expressive and relationship benefits).

Self-Reflection and Feedback-Seeking

These are the two processes that enable the individuals to do maintenance of their personal brands, ensuring their relevance, strength, and competitiveness. Both procure information on the personal brand, the former being internal and the latter—external. Khedher (2015) sees both reflexivity and feedback as integral pieces of the personal branding process. Despite being critical of the way personal branding is being imposed on the society, Wee and Brooks (2010) also see its benefits, as “personal branding strategies are clearly aimed at developing reflexivity because they encourage actors to engage in careful and critical self-assessment about their relative strengths and weaknesses” (p. 47), which is consistent with the research on narrated selfies by Eagar and Dann (2016) , confirming that the sheer act of posting a narrated selfie may require a degree of reflexivity. Gioia et al. (2014) states that seeking confirmation on both positive and negative self-conceptions is a natural human behavior, based on the self-verification theory. The nature of the Web 2.0 environment where many personal branding activities take place presupposes a two-way interaction, including receiving feedback ( Holton and Molyneux, 2017 ). Labrecque et al. (2011) considers feedback essential to close the gap between desired self and perceived identity, as it helps avoiding branding failure. Both self-reflection and feedback-seeking lead to greater self-awareness.

Sensemaking

As the labor environments become decontextualized, as a consequence of technological advances, people have an increased need to construct their working identities ( Brooks and Anumudu, 2016 ). Cederberg (2017) is more categorical, specifying that “the purpose of a personal brand is to build an identity that associates specific emotions and perceptions with an individual while simultaneously managing these perceptions successfully” (p. 1). People make sense of their environment through their identity ( Walsh and Gordon, 2008 ). Since identity is a collection of meanings attached to a person by self and others ( Gecas, 1982 ), the intelligent career places the onus on the individual to make sense of those meanings. In reality, both individuals and the targets of their personal branding efforts engage in a process of reciprocal sense-making ( Gioia et al., 2014 ).

We posit, therefore, that effective sense-making, feedback-seeking, self-reflection, and greater self-awareness lead to minimizing the gap between desired self and perceived identity, resulting in a stronger and more coherent personal brand.

Outcomes of Personal Branding

While many scholar position personal branding as a career success strategy ( Parmentier et al., 2013 ; Brooks and Anumudu, 2016 ), the outcomes of personal branding are multifaceted and non-linear. Fifty-one papers specifically identified outcomes of personal branding. Labrecque et al. (2011) , acknowledging the importance of career motivation, notes that personal branding can also be used in dating, friendships or merely self-expression. Rangarajan et al. (2017) suggested a list of tangible and intangible measures of the effectiveness of a personal brand in the business setting. We synthesize the outcomes in three categories: individual and organizational, where the individual ones can be either intrinsic or extrinsic. Each category is discussed below. The number in brackets following the name of each category refers to the number of papers that discussed it (we coded “career success” as both intrinsic and extrinsic unless specified).

Individual Intrinsic Outcomes (18 Papers)

One of the outcomes of personal branding is developing greater reflexivity ( Khedher, 2015 ). This literature review leads us to conclude that effective personal branding requires self-awareness, feedback-seeking and sense-making, all of which lead to reflexivity in the attempt to position self-identity in the social environment. Some other specifically mentioned intrinsic outcomes are motivation ( Ward and Yates, 2013 ), self-realization ( Gandini, 2016 ), credibility and influence ( Ward and Yates, 2013 ), and acquiring self-promotion skills ( Edmiston, 2014 ). Therefore, we can also hypothesize that effective personal branding leads to greater self-evaluations (self-esteem and general self-efficacy) as defined by Chen et al. (2004) .

Individual Extrinsic Outcomes (50 Papers)

The majority of the reviewed papers determine the outcomes of personal branding either as furthering professional career (69%, n = 22) or creating some sort of social capital (78%, n = 25), be it power and influence ( Ward and Yates, 2013 ; Zinko and Rubin, 2015 ; Hanusch and Bruns, 2017 ), enhanced visibility ( Lee and Cavanaugh, 2016 ; Jaring and Bäck, 2017 ), or prestige ( Milovanović et al., 2015 ). Twelve papers identify differentiation as an outcome, which could enable a connection with the target audience ( Brems et al., 2016 ) and use that connection to receive a preferential treatment against those competing for same resources ( Parmentier et al., 2013 ). Ten papers directly point to monetary outcomes of effective personal branding. ( Hearn, 2008b ) summed up the outcomes of personal branding as, “the function of the branded self is purely rhetorical; its goal is to produce cultural value and, potentially, material profit” (p. 198).

Organizational Outcomes (10 Papers)

Despite the predominant view of personal branding from the position of the benefit for the person, there is emerging research linking employee branding with organizational performance. In a study of 225 Polish professionals, Kucharska and Dąbrowski (2016) found that sharing tacit knowledge, arguably a company's key competitive advantage in the knowledge economy, is positively correlated with personal branding, which is consistent with the exploratory findings of Vosloban (2012) . Zinko and Rubin (2015) distill the organizational benefits to three elements: (a) predicting individuals' behaviors, (b) basking in the reflected glory of individuals, and (c) organizational signaling. This applies not only to heads of firms ( Chen and Chung, 2016 ; Malhotra and Malhotra, 2016 ) or prominent figures in political parties ( Neale et al., 2008 ), but to any employee as personal branding promotes the ideology of enterprise ( Sturdy and Wright, 2008 ).

Integration and a Conceptual Model

Derived from the knowledge in the reviewed literature and the analysis presented above, a conceptual personal branding model emerges as a result. Figure 3 demonstrates the relationships among the key elements of the model, each of which has been discussed above.

Figure 3 . Personal branding model.

By definition, personal branding is a dynamic construct, subject to ongoing adjustment and change. Personal brands need maintenance ( Lorgnier and O'Rourke, 2011 ), i.e., persistent reassessment and monitoring ( Cederberg, 2017 ), which is achieved through constantly repeating the processes described above. This is particularly relevant at the points of career transitions. Schlosser et al. (2017) found that “executives must revisit their personal brands, deciding how to best position their skills and knowledge and values within the context of their new < …> organizations” (p. 576) at each transitional stage. In a study of personal branding in organizational settings Sturdy and Wright (2008) discovered that consultants making a career transition into the corporate labor market need to “trade” their elite personal brand for one that is consistent with the new organization's culture, in order to be effective. When personal branding happens online, the process stages are not discrete and sequential but overarching ( Tarnovskaya, 2017 ), so “when a personal brand is born online, its enforcement and maintenance become critical immediately” (p. 33). All of this evidence leads us to conclude that personal branding is an ongoing process, requiring constant re-evaluation and maintenance.

Ethical and Social Considerations

A particular set of findings deals with the ethical and social considerations of personal branding. Irrespective of the definitions, theory, or the model, scholars debate the ethical nature of the branded self in contemporary careers. We have identified four directions of such debate: egalitarianism vs. elitism of personal branding, commodification of self, blurring the line between the personal and professional lives, and teaching personal branding. We proceed to examine these in more detail.

Lair et al. (2005) were the first researchers to raise the ethical questions associated with personal branding, focusing on three areas: gender, race, and culture. They were primarily analyzing at the US labor market, but, e.g., Saleem and Iglesias Bedós (2013) also questioned across the board applicability of personal branding practices in various cultural contents. However, such differences also benefit the individual. Although in a very specific industry of sexual services, Phua and Caras (2008) point out that ethnicity, race, or nationality can be a differentiating factor in personal branding, while gender not being statistically significant. Content analysis of Instagram photos of Olympic athletes revealed that sexually suggestive photos are most popular ( Geurin-Eagleman and Burch, 2016 ). While this lends itself to a discussion on morality of personal branding methods, it also leads us to the conclusion that gender, race and culture issues associated with personal branding are situation-dependent.

The ethical debate of today centers around the concept of commodification with polarized opinions on personal branding as the new savoir-être of the new shared, digital and freelance economy ( Gandini, 2016 ) vis-à-vis the self being “a commodity for sale in the labor market, which must generate its own rhetorically persuasive packaging, its own promotional skin, within the confines of the dominant corporate imaginary” ( Hearn, 2008b , p. 201). This pervasive messaging to brand oneself may be misused by mass media, e.g., reality television, to take advantage of most “precarious individuals and groups” to expose their insecurities to the public in exchange for creating a stronger personal brand ( Hearn, 2008a ). Sociologists are concerned that not only our selves become commodified, but also a new type of labor—the digital work of managing own professional identity online—is being thrust on the workers in the realities of post-Fordist capitalism. Vallas and Cummins (2015) even use the word “coercive” to describe the vigor with which personal branding is being introduced to the workforce. They also question the applicability of marketing techniques used for selling shampoo or washing machines to branding individuals. Yet, in their research they found that outward rejection of personal branding was rare, and in general the interviewees demonstrated an “active embrace of branding discourse, coupled with an acknowledgment that one ought to engage in a determined effort to refine one's brand as a condition of one's success and personal fulfillment” (p. 311).

Yet, the requirements of the “knowledge” or “reputation” economy blur the lines between the personal and professional. Labrecque et al. (2011) found that “separating social and professional worlds appears nearly impossible without the proper mechanisms for control” (p. 49). Several studies were conducted around the reporter profession. Conducting interviews with reporters, Molyneux (2015) discovered a sense of uneasiness as they lacked knowledge and skills of balancing professional and personal identities with no clear guidance from their employers. We see that in this specific organizational field, reporters are not aggressively pursuing personal branding, and particularly newspaper reporters being the least motivated to do so ( Schultz and Sheffer, 2012 ). The hypothesis here could be that professions that are most dependent on social media and Web 2.0 technologies require a higher degree of personal branding, while it is less of a necessity for more traditional fields, which is consistent with the research in the entrepreneurial environment ( Pihl, 2013 ; Gandini, 2016 ). Examining personal brand positioning of journalists on Twitter, Ottovordemgentschenfelde (2017) discovered that they had to manage three identities at the same time—organizational, professional, and personal. This expands the existing role of a worker and adds additional tasks to perform without lowering the employer's performance expectations. This creates a conflict that many employees may not know how to manage. Unfortunately, the popular literature, urging everyone to delve into personal branding, provides little advice on how to deal with such quandaries ( Pihl, 2013 ).

Another ethical point related to the protecting the private space is dissemination of private information. Marwick and boyd (2011) found that social media users operate within the assumption that their imagined audiences are bounded, while, in reality, the cyberspace is limitless. This dialectic pressure between the need to expose oneself in order to self-brand and the need to control own content and the personal boundaries is one of the findings in the study of Labrecque et al. (2011) .

Finally, teaching personal branding is a point of concern, too. The issue of the curricula for personal branding and the practical challenge of preparing people to be effective personal branders were raised as early as 2005 in academic sources ( Shepherd, 2005 ). Out of the 100 reviewed articles, 11 deal with teaching personal branding, suggesting various curricula ( Edmiston, 2014 ; Johnson, 2017 ) and estimating effectiveness of different assignments in teaching personal branding skills ( McCorkle and McCorkle, 2012 ; Wetsch, 2012 ; Stanton and Stanton, 2013 ; Jones and Leverenz, 2017 ). This review demonstrated that there is limited understanding and concurrence on the concepts and processes; therefore teaching unproven ideas raises ethical issues in itself. While some studies report teaching personal branding as a means to developing accompanying skills, such as awareness of online communication issues or metacognitive, creative, and critical thinking skills ( Lorgnier and O'Rourke, 2011 ), most of the papers mentioned in this section teach personal branding as a core subject. For better or worse, the popularity of personal branding has created an industry, which is ahead of the academic thought. Brooks and Anumudu (2016) found that “trainers, career and vocational development consultants, and personal branding enthusiasts publish books and articles and conduct workshops to teach individuals to build their personal brands to become more employable and successful” (p. 24). The contemporary career frameworks (boundaryless, portfolio, intelligent, Protean) share the same underlying assumption that career changes will become more frequent and personal agency will increase. Therefore, such individuals need to be supported by bona fide training on how to thrive in the modern employment environment. The demand has already been vocalized to identify the skills required for effective personal branding ( Manai and Holmlund, 2015 ), develop the content of such training ( Lorgnier and O'Rourke, 2011 ), and provide guidance on the decision to engage in personal branding vs. remaining digitally invisible ( Kleppinger and Cain, 2015 ). However, furthering the ethical debate, Pagis and Ailon (2017) point out that learning the complex personal branding skills may not be accessible to all.

Discussion and Future Directions

This systematic review is the first attempt to look at the academic literature pertaining to personal branding comprehensively. Having reviewed the selected 100 papers, we have (a) provided a definition of personal branding and a personal brand that is more comprehensive, rigorous and detailed than the existing ones and that can help to distinguish these concepts from related ones, and (b) offered a conceptual model capturing inputs, processes, and outputs of personal branding. These findings and this systematic literature review as a whole suggest important directions for future research on personal branding that we discuss below.

Developing a New Measurement Instrument of Personal Branding

While many authors have indicated the need for aligning similar concepts across the related fields ( Zinko and Rubin, 2015 ), as well as developing a comprehensive personal (re-) branding framework ( Resnick et al., 2016 ; Schlosser et al., 2017 ), only in this paper we have provided an extension to the existing body of research by offering an integrative definition of personal branding . By following Podsakoff et al. (2016) rigorous approach toward greater construct clarity through identifying its key attributes and positioning personal branding as a self-standing concept in the nomological field, we outlined its distinct differentiating properties. The introduction of the integrative definition of personal branding warrants development of a new measurement instrument of personal branding. While Chen and Chung (2016) already developed a scale to measure the personal brand of a business CEO, we question its validity, due to lack of rigor in the process of scale development and validation. Therefore we hope that the new definition will stimulate much needed personal branding scale development and validation for moving the field further.

Empirically Testing the Proposed Personal Branding Model

When developing a conceptual personal branding model, we found that 26 papers discussed the antecedents of personal branding, and 51 papers discussed the outcomes, while only 29 papers focused on the processes. This points toward lacunae in academic knowledge of personal branding that needs further investigation. Understanding the antecedents and outcomes of personal branding is critical for further theory building and field research. By providing an integrative model we offer fresh avenues for future research and join other scholars' calls for empirical testing of conceptual models of personal branding ( Bendisch et al., 2013 ; Dumitriu and Ciobanu, 2015 ; Johns and English, 2016 ).

Studying Personal Branding in the Organizational Context

Our review reveals that a small group of researchers specifically point in the direction of studying the person vs. organization tension resulting from personal branding ( Hughes, 2007 ; Bendisch et al., 2013 ; Karaduman, 2013 ; Nolan, 2015 ; Zinko and Rubin, 2015 ; Ottovordemgentschenfelde, 2017 ). Only few studies related to the organizational/corporate setting exist ( Korzynski, 2012 ; Vosloban, 2012 ; Kucharska and Dąbrowski, 2016 ). Given the discussed tensions between personal and organizational, the managerial attitudes toward employee personal branding call for further research of organizational practices (e.g., guidelines, communication) and employees' activities (e.g., co-branding, signaling). Hence, it may be opportune to converge the studies of careers and human resources management, which traditionally have been apart. Although novel and unconventional, it may prove necessary. Firms must embrace the new reality of workers with strong personal brands overreaching the organizational boundaries. For instance, Kucharska (2017) suggested that the co-branding concept is also applicable to personal brands. So, one of the areas of future research could be examining whether constructing a working identity through personal branding is a source of greater employee loyalty, intrapreneurship intentions, innovation, new clients, and an indication of a stronger employer brand.

Studying the Sustainability and Transferability of Personal Branding

This literature review shows that there is a host of issues regarding the veracity of personal branding ( Hughes, 2007 ), portability of personal brands ( Parmentier et al., 2013 ), and their sustainability ( Bendisch et al., 2013 ). We wish to see further contributions to the ongoing scholarly debate about whether having multiple personal brands is possible, how to adapt one's personal brand when changing employers, and how to avoid the spillover from private social media activities into the professional sphere. Furthermore, up to date the research has only focused on the industries that are most conducive for personal branding. We do not know much about the challenges of creating and maintaining personal brands in settings that are not conducive or outright preclusive of self-promotion, at least, to the outside world. The limited amount of industries and roles studied to date, as well as small samples in those studies, renders scarce opportunities to generalize the knowledge and make conclusive statements about extrapolating the findings. Additionally, the majority of the empirical studies took place in European, Australian, or North American settings, so the possible research directions could lead scholars to test the theoretical premises of personal branding in other cultures.

We conclude that the academic interest in the concept of personal branding is growing, and that a better understanding of how a personal brand is constructed and managed in the modern labor markets characterized by frequent job changes, project-based work engagements, and increasing job insecurity is needed. This literature review contributes to the field of personal branding by consolidating the extant research, proposing an integrative definition of personal branding and personal brand, developing a conceptual personal branding model, and discussing future research directions that could stimulate the advancement of our knowledge on the topic.

By showing that personal branding is a distinct construct that spans a number of disciplines, we point to an opportunity for a closer integration of traditionally individual-driven career efforts and organization-driven human resources practices to help the employees create effective personal brands, benefitting both the individual and the firm. This paper casts but a glimpse of light into the confusion and uncertainty around the merging spheres of personal and professional. Research and practice have a chance to expand the theory and provide guidance on successfully navigating the current employment reality.

Author Contributions

SG is a PhD candidate, who is the main author of the submitted paper. SK and EL are PhD supervisors. SG was responsible for identifying relevant papers under the supervision of SK, who has expertise in literature review writing. SG also did the initial analysis of the paper and wrote the initial draft. In the consequent process SK and EL helped to develop the paper toward the final submission.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02238/full#supplementary-material

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Keywords: personal branding, personal brand, self-presentation, self-marketing, career

Citation: Gorbatov S, Khapova SN and Lysova EI (2018) Personal Branding: Interdisciplinary Systematic Review and Research Agenda. Front. Psychol . 9:2238. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02238

Received: 27 June 2018; Accepted: 29 October 2018; Published: 21 November 2018.

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Copyright © 2018 Gorbatov, Khapova and Lysova. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Sergey Gorbatov, c2VyZ2V5LmdvcmJhdG92QHN0dWRlbnQudnUubmw=

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Get Noticed to Get Ahead: The Impact of Personal Branding on Career Success

Sergey gorbatov, svetlana n khapova, evgenia i lysova.

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Edited by: Giuseppe Santisi, University of Catania, Italy

Reviewed by: Paola Magnano, Kore University of Enna, Italy; Andrea Zammitti, University of Catania, Italy

*Correspondence: Sergey Gorbatov, [email protected]

This article was submitted to Organizational Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

Received 2019 Sep 4; Accepted 2019 Nov 11; Collection date 2019.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

There is a growing amount of attention being brought to personal branding as an effective career behavior, but little is known about the factors that predict personal branding behaviors and their outcomes. In two studies ( N = 477) across two distinctly different cultural contexts (Western and Asian) based on a newly developed and validated scale of personal branding, we have examined the antecedents and outcomes of personal branding. The findings confirm that personal branding leads to greater career satisfaction, fully mediated by perceived employability. Career achievement aspiration was the strongest predictor of engaging in personal branding, while career feedback negatively related to personal branding intention and career self-efficacy positively related to personal branding but not to personal branding intention. These findings highlight the importance of personal branding as a contemporary career technique in promoting one’s personal brand identity to achieve beneficial career outcomes.

Keywords: personal branding, self-presentation; employability; career; theory of planned behavior

Introduction

The contemporary employment environment and increased amount of flexible work arrangements require individuals to become much more market oriented ( Lair et al., 2005 ; Manai and Holmlund, 2015 ). One concept that captures such personal marketing orientation is personal branding , which refers to “a strategic process of creating, positioning, and maintaining a positive impression of oneself, based in a unique combination of individual characteristics, which signal a certain promise to the target audience through a differentiated narrative and imagery” ( Gorbatov et al., 2018 , p. 6). Research shows that personal branding helps individuals to attain positive career outcomes, among which are social capital ( Gandini, 2016 ; Paivi and Back, 2017 ; Tarnovskaya, 2017 ), financial rewards ( Close et al., 2011 ; Rangarajan et al., 2017 ), and career opportunities ( Parmentier et al., 2013 ; Schlosser et al., 2017 ).

Increasingly, individuals today do their work through the Internet (e.g., gig-work), where “self-branding in the knowledge economy is a device for self-promotion for the pursuit of self-realization” ( Gandini, 2016 , p. 124). This global trend of digitalization for many career seekers means an opportunity to offer their skills and competencies globally and across boundaries of industries and organizations. This is done through personal branding, or in other words, through making one’s individual value proposition known to the target audience. As a concept, personal branding comes from the marketing literature ( Lair et al., 2005 ; Shepherd, 2005 ). Although it is still considered to be a new concept, there are already more than 100 papers published on the topic of personal branding in the organizational behavior literature, as evidenced by a recent literature review by Gorbatov et al. (2018) . Yet, due to the paucity of quantitative empirical studies on personal branding, none of this research gives a clear answer to the question of what the antecedents and outcomes of personal branding are in the career context. Addressing this research gap is urgent and relevant given the growing number of individuals who engage in personal branding behaviors on the Internet and, specifically, social media.

In this paper, we aim to fill this research gap by developing and testing a model of antecedents and outcomes of personal branding in the Western and Asian cultural contexts. The main focus of this paper is to test the theoretical relationships between personal branding and other career constructs. As no validated measure of personal branding existed, we had to develop one. In doing so, we followed the approach of Carmeli et al. (2015) , who created a measure of respective engagement as a preliminary step to empirical testing of their hypotheses. Consequently, we first developed a personal branding scale, and, in Study 1, we then cross-validated this measure and explored the relationship between personal branding and its outcomes (i.e., perceived employability and career satisfaction). In Study 2, building on the theory of planned behavior ( Ajzen, 1991 ), we examined the antecedents of personal branding.

Thus, epistemologically, we extend the extant career theory to incorporate personal branding as an increasingly important career tool in the contemporary digitalized work environment. Second, we explore the ontology of the relationships between personal branding and other related concepts, such as career aspiration, employability, and career satisfaction. Finally, we make a methodological contribution by developing and validating a personal branding scale, enabling future research in the field.

Theoretical Background

Personal branding.

The concept of personal branding originated in marketing research ( Keller, 1993 ; Keller and Lehmann, 2006 ) and since then entered the field of organizational and vocational studies as a type of proactive work behavior ( Crant, 2000 , p. 436). The definition of personal branding establishes it as a proactive work behavior that employs marketing strategies and tactics to achieve career benefits in three distinct ways: strategic, differentiated, and technology based. First, while some other self-presentation behaviors from the same nomological field, such as impression management, may be both conscious and unconscious ( Bolino et al., 2016 ), personal branding is strategic, which means that the activities are coordinated and point in a defined direction, targeting a specific audience. Second, effective personal branding achieves differentiation of the marketed self, conveying valued and unique individual characteristics against the competition or the frame of reference. It signals benefits or communicates a promise to deliver an outcome valued by others, while fitting into the expectations of a field ( Parmentier et al., 2013 ). In the studies of human behavior, this is known as “optimal distinctiveness,” or the competing needs for assimilation and inclusion and the need for differentiation from the in-group ( Brewer, 1991 ; Leonardelli et al., 2010 ). Finally, personal branding today heavily relies on technology as the primary vehicle to convey imagery (e.g., logo, photos, and work samples) and related storytelling to the target audience. Textual and visual performances make personal branding tangible and real ( Pera et al., 2016 ; Pagis and Ailon, 2017 ), resulting in a stream of studies examining the use of technology for personal branding, such as LinkedIn profile photos ( van der Land et al., 2016 ; Tifferet and Vilnai-Yavetz, 2018 ), Facebook profiles ( Labrecque et al., 2011 ), Instagram photos ( Geurin-Eagleman and Burch, 2016 ), YouTube channels ( Chen, 2013 ), academic portals ResearchGate and Mendeley ( Van Noorden, 2014 ), and Twitter activity ( Brems et al., 2017 ; Hedman, 2017 ). Technology also allows career seekers to estimate the effectiveness of personal branding activities, which is essential for sense making and applying any corrective measures when necessary.

In sum, personal branding as an intentional individual career behavior emerged in response to the increasing emergence of new communication technologies in all parts of people’s lives and work as well as the changes in the labor market and the employer-employee relationship ( Vallas and Christin, 2018 ). In these new forms of employment, personal branding is an important factor of career success ( Shepherd, 2005 ; Parmentier et al., 2013 ; Gioia et al., 2014 ) as an adaptable career behavior aimed at packaging and presenting one’s professional identity to meet the needs of the target audience.

Personal Branding and Career Outcomes

Traditionally, career outcomes have been conceptualized as career success including largely objective and, to a lesser extent, subjective facets. As such, career success is defined as “the accomplishment of desirable work-related outcomes at any point in a person’s work experiences over time” ( Arthur et al., 2005 , p. 179). This traditional conceptualization of career outcomes is relevant for employees who work in a single company during their whole employment ( Wang and Wanberg, 2017 ). Today, however, individuals move from firm to firm and from job to a job frequently, and they also find themselves in novel employment relationships, such as freelancing ( van den Born and van Witteloostuijn, 2013 ; Kuhn, 2016 ), temporary and contract working conditions ( Davis-Blake and Uzzi, 1993 ), and recareering or mid- and late-career changes ( Wöhrmann et al., 2014 ; Rice, 2015 ; Robertson, 2017 ). Career outcome criteria other than objective career success are therefore more important to contemporary workers.

Career satisfaction is an important subjective career outcome, and it is shown to be the result of processes requiring agency in managing one’s career, such as career self-management ( King, 2004 ), impression management ( Cheng et al., 2014 ), and career adaptability ( Rudolph et al., 2017 ). For example, studying 195 employee-supervisor dyads from various industries in Taiwan, Cheng et al. (2014) showed that individuals who employed self-promotion behaviors showed greater career satisfaction compared to those who did not employ such behaviors. Since personal branding and self-promotion are self-presentation behaviors, we hypothesized that personal branding would also be positively related to career satisfaction.

Hypothesis 1a : Personal branding is positively related to career satisfaction.

Perceived employability, defined as “one’s ability to identify and realize career opportunities” ( Fugate et al., 2004 , p. 23), is also considered to be one of the leading career outcomes of contemporary employees. In line with the employability research, and with its focus on the individual positive assessment of his/her marketability on the external and internal job markets, we propose that efforts made in promoting oneself through personal branding will lead to higher perceived employability. One of the central processes in personal branding is constructing the desired professional image of self, and there is evidence that clarity of professional self positively impacts employability ( Lysova et al., 2018 ).

Hypothesis 1b : Personal branding is positively related to perceived employability.

Furthermore, perceived employability is expected to mediate the relationship between personal branding and higher career satisfaction. This is supported by recent findings that employability is positively related to career satisfaction. For example, studies have shown that career satisfaction is an outcome of both career adaptability ( Rudolph et al., 2017 ) and a stronger sense of professional identity ( McKevitt et al., 2017 ). The mediating effect of employability of the relationship between emotional self-efficacy and career satisfaction was examined, for example, by Dacre Pool and Qualter (2013) , who found that employability mediated the relationship between emotional self-efficacy and career satisfaction. Besides, personal branding has a signaling function. By communicating one’s professional value, individuals can reduce the information asymmetry problem in the labor market to their advantage ( Zinko and Rubin, 2015 ) to achieve the desired differentiation, as signaling is positively related with career success ( Ramaswami et al., 2010 ). Finally, people who engage in personal branding have high social capital ( Bourdieu, 1993 ); they engage in such activities as communicating their own value proposition or informing others of personal achievements. Social capital was found to be positively related to career success ( Parmentier et al., 2013 ; Delisle and Parmentier, 2016 ; Caro Castaño, 2017 ). Seibert et al. (2001a , b) demonstrated how greater social capital in the form of access to information, access to resources, and career sponsorship leads to increased career satisfaction.

Hypothesis 1c : Perceived employability mediates the relationship between personal branding and career satisfaction.

To test the hypotheses, we developed a measurement of personal branding and conducted two studies. The purpose of Study 1 was to explore the relationship between personal branding, perceived employability, and career satisfaction, while cross-validating the new measurement instrument; we examined the antecedents of personal branding in Study 2.

Personal Branding Measurement Development

We constructed the scales to measure personal branding, using the Likert method as described by Dawis (1987) . Drawing from the construct definition, we collected a pool of 39 items (15 for strategic, 11 for differentiated, and 13 for technologically savvy) that were reviewed for clarity and content validity by an industrial and organizational psychologist and a marketing professor (the full list can be obtained from the corresponding author). All items were answered using a five-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree , 5 = strongly agree ).

We recruited 1,001 participants on the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform, where they completed the survey for pay. Since Fokkema and Greiff (2017) advised against performing EFA and CFA on the same sample, we split the sample into two to perform the exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory (CFA) factor analyses separately according to employment status to establish that the scale works well for both workers and job seekers. We split the sample by the employment status of the respondents to examine whether the EFA and CFA results would be consistent across these different groups. The invariance analysis revealed that there were no statistically significant variances in the measurement model across the two groups.

Exploratory Factor Analysis

We conducted the EFA on the population of the sample who were not in full employment ( N = 204): female = 54.9%; average age = 33; US (97 cases, 47.5%), India (60 cases, 29.4%), other countries not exceeding 5% of the total sample. The employment status of the respondents was as follows: employed, part time = 72.5%; not employed, looking for work = 14.7%; not employed, not looking for work = 7.4%; retired = 4.9%; disabled, not able to work = 0.5%. We used principal factor analysis with promax rotation ( Osborne and Fitzpatrick, 2012 ) in SPSS to examine the potential factor structure of the scale. We iteratively removed the items with loadings <0.35 as well as items that cross-loaded >0.35 two or more factors.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis

CFA was performed on the employed population of the Mechanical Turk sample ( N = 797): female = 44.5%; average age = 33; US = 56.2%, India = 35.8%, other countries not exceeding 2% of the total sample. In a conservative approach, we used seven indices to assess model fit ( Noar, 2003 ; Schreiber et al., 2006 ): Chi-square/df ratio ( χ 2 /df); relative fit indices—normed fit index (NFI), incremental fit index (IFI), Tucker Lewis index (TLI), comparative fit index (CFI), and parsimony-adjusted measures—root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA); and p of close fit ( p close ).

To demonstrate the equivalence of all items designed to measure personal branding across various samples, we performed invariance testing of the scale by analyzing the differences across genders in the unconstrained, constrained measurement weights, constrained structural covariances, and fully constrained models.

The EFA yielded a three-factor structure comprised of 18 items. The Cronbach’s alphas for the three factors were 0.80, 0.83, and 0.90—above the acceptable cut off point of 0.70 ( Nunnally and Bernstein, 1994 ). Together, the three factors explained 58.7% of the variance, with correlations among them of 0.46, 0.53, and 0.61 ( p < 0.001), supporting their distinctiveness.

The initial CFA on the employed part of the sample confirmed the three-factor model, and its fit indices were acceptable ( χ 2 /df = 4.02; NFI = 0.92; IFI = 0.94; TLI = 0.93; CFI = 0.94; and RMSEA = 0.06, where p close < 0.001). The standardized regression weights for all items were greater than 0.50. Table 1 summarizes the EFA and CFA outcomes.

Personal branding scale items and their factor loadings.

λ, standardized regression weight (all p’s < 0.001); α 1 , Cronbach’s alpha for the factor in the EFA study; α 2 , Cronbach’s alpha for the factor in the CFA study .

As there is some evidence that women may engage in personal branding differently than men ( Rui and Stefanone, 2013 ; Thompson-Whiteside et al., 2018 ), it was important to establish invariance of the scale across genders. The scalar invariance testing returned values of p greater than 0.05 in all instances when the measurement weights, structural covariances, and measurement residuals were constrained ( Table 2 ). This allowed us to reject the null hypothesis that there are statistically significant variances in the measurement model across genders.

Invariance testing.

N = 797. CFI, comparative fit index; NFI, normed fit index; IFI, incremental fit index; TLI, Tucker Lewis index .

Throughout the subsequent studies, we continue to establish the predictive validity of the personal branding scale.

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between the outcome measures of personal branding, while testing the newly developed personal branding scale to establish its external validity.

Participants

We collected 306 responses via an online survey that was distributed by two master’s students at a large public university in the Netherlands to people in their networks (e.g., classmates, friends, professional contacts, etc.) in accordance with the research ethics regulations of that university. Completing the survey was anonymous and the participants could withdraw at any moment. After the initial visual and boxplot analyses, 43 responses were removed because of acquiescing responding (i.e., providing same values for all items) or missing values in the key variables of interest, which resulted in an analyzable sample of 263 cases (female = 58.6%; Mean Age = 27 (SD = 9.5); the Netherlands = 71.9%, China = 23.2%; employed part-time = 45.6%, employed full-time = 30%, not employed, not looking for work = 14.8%, not employed, looking for work = 8.4%; and 5 years of work experience or less = 65%).

Answers to all variables were given on a five-point scale ranging from 1 ( strongly disagree ) to 5 ( strongly agree ).

Personal branding was measured by the 18-item scale developed in this paper. Cronbach’s alpha for the overall scale was 0.87. The alphas for the three factors of the scale (strategic, differentiated, and technologically savvy) were 0.77, 0.73, and 0.83, respectively. As we were interested in overall personal branding behavior rather than its subfactors, we chose to stay at the higher scale level.

Perceived employability was measured with the five-item scale developed by Berntson and Marklund (2007) . An example item was “My experience is in demand on the labor market.” Cronbach’s alpha was 0.76.

Career satisfaction was measured with a four-item scale by Turban and Dougherty (1994) . An example item was “Given my age, my career is on or ahead of schedule.” Cronbach’s alpha was 0.83.

We used gender and age as control variables, given earlier findings that men and women approach personal branding differently ( Lobpries et al., 2018 ; Thompson-Whiteside et al., 2018 ) and an assumption that there will be variance across generations in the abilities to strategically differentiate self in the labor market and the technological savvy to do so effectively online ( Reisenwitz and Iyer, 2009 ).

Analytical Strategy

The analyses were performed in two steps using the AMOS software ( Arbuckle, 2017 ). In the first step, the measurement model was tested. We performed a series of CFAs to establish the discriminant validity of the constructs in the model. In the second step, we used structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the theoretical model, using the maximum likelihood method of estimation. To assess the fit of the models, we used various measures: χ 2 /df, CFI, TLI, RMSEA, and SRMR ( Browne and Cudeck, 1993 ; Hu and Bentler, 1999 ; Kline, 2016 ). To estimate the indirect effects, accounting for multivariate non-normality of the data, we used bootstrapping technique with 5,000 bootstrapping samples and 95% confidence intervals ( Preacher et al., 2010 ; Kline, 2016 ). Bootstrapping does not assume the sampling distribution as normal and performs iterative resampling analyses, resulting in more accurate confidence intervals of indirect effects as it derives the estimates of the parameters of the model strictly from the sample ( Preacher and Hayes, 2008 ).

Measurement Model

The measurement model, including three latent variables (i.e., personal branding, perceived employability, and career satisfaction), showed an acceptable fit to the data: χ 2 = 529.40, df = 315, χ 2 /df = 1.68, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.91, TLI = 0.90, RMSEA = 0.05 ( p close = 0.41), and SRMR = 0.06. This model’s fit was better than the fit of the model where all the variables loaded on one latent factor ( χ 2 = 773.32, df = 318, χ 2 /df = 2.43, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.81, TLI = 0.78, RMSEA = 0.07 ( p close < 0.001), SRMR = 0.11, ∆ χ 2 = 243.92, df = 3, p < 0.001). All the items had significant loadings on the intended factors (range λ = 0.41–0.86, p ’s < 0.001).

Descriptive Statistics

Means, standard deviations, and correlations among all the study variables are shown in Table 3 . Contrary to our expectations, neither age nor gender had significant correlations with any of the dependent variables, and we therefore continued with the analyses without these measures. Personal branding was moderately correlated with perceived employability ( r = 0.48, p < 0.01) and weakly correlated with career satisfaction ( r = 0.28, p < 0.01), indicating a more distal relationship with the latter. As expected, perceived employability was significantly correlated with career satisfaction ( r = 0.48, p < 0.01).

Study 1 variables’ means, standard deviations (SD), and correlations.

N = 263. Cronbach’s alphas are displayed in bold on the diagonal .

p < 0.05;

p < 0.01 .

Hypotheses Testing

The mediation model where personal branding influences career satisfaction via perceived employability showed an acceptable fit to the data: χ 2 = 529.40, df = 315, χ 2 /df = 1.68, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.91, TLI = 0.90, RMSEA = 0.05 ( p close = 0.41), SRMR = 0.06. We tested two alternative models: a full mediation model and a model where perceived employability impacts career satisfaction via personal branding (i.e., personal branding is a mediator). The full mediation model was not significantly different from the baseline partial mediation one: χ 2 = 530.70, df = 316, χ 2 /df = 1.68, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.91, TLI = 0.90, RMSEA = 0.05 ( p close = 0.41), SRMR = 0.06, ∆ χ 2 = 1.3, df = 1, p = 0.254. The model with personal branding as a mediator showed a poorer fit: χ 2 = 575.82, df = 316, χ 2 /df = 1.82, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.89, TLI = 0.88, RMSEA = 0.06 ( p close = 0.08), SRMR = 0.07, ∆ χ 2 = 46.42, df = 1, p < 0.001. We therefore proceeded with the analyses on the baseline model.

We proposed that personal branding is positively related to perceived employability and career satisfaction via perceived employability. In line with these hypotheses, the SEM results indicated that personal branding positively and significantly related to perceived employability ( γ = 0.61, p < 0.001), and perceived employability positively and significantly related to career satisfaction ( β = 0.70, p < 0.001); the relationship between personal branding and career satisfaction when accounting for perceived employability, however, was non-significant ( γ = −0.11, p = 0.34). The model indicated a significant indirect effect of personal branding on career satisfaction through perceived employability [ indirect effect = 0.63, 95% BCa CI (0.36; 1.16), p < 0.001], as graphically represented in Figure 1 . Thus, Hypotheses 1a–1c were supported.

Final mediation model showing the positive effect of personal branding on career satisfaction is mediated by one’s perceived employability (Study 1). Regression results are reported as standardized betas. *** p < 0.001. This model explains 43% of the variance [ R 2 = 0.43, 95% CI (0.24–0.61)].

The findings of Study 1 show that, in line with our hypotheses, personal branding had a positive and significant indirect effect on career satisfaction via perceived employability. It means that, by itself, personal branding does not impact satisfaction with one’s career. However, personal branding implies taking proactive career-enhancing steps and clarifying the desired professional future self in the future ( Strauss et al., 2012 ). This is positively related to perceived employability, which, in turn, has been proven to lead to greater career satisfaction.

Having established the positive relationship of personal branding and perceived employability, the aim of the second study was to focus on the antecedents of personal branding. Given that the relationship between perceived employability and career satisfaction is well studied and described in many papers ( De Vos et al., 2011 ; Dacre Pool and Qualter, 2013 ; Lo Presti et al., 2018 ), we left only perceived employability as the outcome of personal branding for the sake of model simplicity.

To understand the reasons why individuals may engage in personal branding, we framed its antecedents in the theory of planned behavior (TPB; Ajzen, 1991 ). The TPB posits that, in order for a behavior to be performed, three determinants of intention must be satisfied: attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control ( Ajzen, 1991 ). These determinants strengthen or weaken the behavioral intention , which, in turn, predicts the enactment of that behavior.

First, the attitude toward engaging in personal branding to achieve greater career success must be positive. Such attitude is encapsulated in the concept of career achievement aspiration ( Gregor and O’Brien, 2016 ). While some authors allow a possibility of personal branding for other purposes, such as dating ( Labrecque et al., 2011 ), the literature conclusively suggests that individuals are more likely to engage in personal branding when they perceive a career-related benefit; those who are motivated by advancing own career are more likely to use personal branding as a career tool. Gregor and O’Brien (2016) suggested achievement, leadership, and educational factors of career aspiration, but, given the diversity of career experiences where individuals may apply personal branding, we focused only on career achievement aspiration.

Second, the subjective norm refers to the social pressure on the individuals to progress in their careers. Getting improvement feedback is known to lead to a variety of positive career outcomes, such as job performance, organizational citizenship behaviors, ( Whitaker and Levy, 2012 ), and job satisfaction ( Anseel and Lievens, 2007 ). Hence, getting feedback on how someone should go about positioning herself professionally should increase the intention to engage in personal branding.

Third, perceived behavioral control, such as an individual’s beliefs about the ease or difficulty of performing a particular behavior, is theorized in our research as career self-efficacy ( Day and Allen, 2004 ). When an individual feels in charge of his/her own career and feels able to execute the desired career behaviors well, the likelihood of engaging in personal branding increases. Ajzen (1991) posited that “perceived behavioral control, together with behavioral intention, can be used directly to predict behavioral achievement” (p. 184). This makes us conclude that career self-efficacy combined with the intention to engage in personal branding will lead to doing so, and career self-efficacy will also have a direct effect on personal branding.

While thinking about doing something is not the same as the action itself, Ajzen and Fishbein (1980) asserted that the best predictor of engaging in a behavior is the intention to do so. We, therefore, hypothesized that people would engage in personal branding if they have a strong intention to do so.

Hypothesis 2 : (a) career achievement aspiration, (b) career feedback, and (c) career self-efficacy are positively related to personal branding intention.

Hypothesis 3 : Career self-efficacy is positively related to personal branding.

Hypothesis 4 : Personal branding intention is positively related to personal branding.

Hypothesis 5 : Personal branding intention mediates the relationship between (a) career achievement aspiration, (b) career feedback, and (c) career self-efficacy, and personal branding.

The role of self-efficacy, proactive personality, personal initiative, and feedback seeking in driving proactive behaviors has been extensively discussed ( Crant, 2000 ). We hypothesized that similar concepts, such as those studied in this paper, would have the same mechanisms of action when applied to proactive career behaviors, such as personal branding. And, as established in Study 1, personal branding is strongly related to perceived employability. We, therefore, expected that its antecedents would have a positive indirect effect on perceived employability too.

Hypothesis 6 : Personal branding intention and then personal branding sequentially mediate the relationship between (a) career achievement aspiration, (b) career feedback, and (c) career self-efficacy and perceived employability.

Participants were recruited via the researchers’ networks, e.g., LinkedIn and WeChat, popular in China, and were encouraged to ask their colleagues to also participate using a standardized invitation about the project and a link to the anonymous survey. A total of 249 responses were collected. Similar to the Study 1 data cleansing strategy, after the visual and boxplot analyses, 35 responses were removed because of acquiescing responding or missing data in core variables, resulting in an analyzable sample of 214 cases, containing no missing data (female = 65.4%; Mean Age = 36.7 (SD = 11.40); China = 88.8%, the Netherlands = 6.5%, Germany = 1.9%; bachelor’s degree = 57.5%, master’s degree = 15.9%, high school = 11.2%, college = 10.3%, Ph.D. = 3.3%, secondary school = 1.9%; employed full-time = 75.7%, employed part-time = 5.1%, not employed, looking for work = 13.6%, not employed, not looking for work = 2.3%; a total of 38% had 5 years of work experience or less).

The survey items were translated into Mandarin Chinese following the back-translation procedure ( Sperber et al., 1994 ). The only exception was the career feedback scale, the original version of which was provided to us already in Chinese by the scale authors. Responses to all the statements in this study were provided on a five-point scale ranging from 1 ( strongly disagree ) to 5 ( strongly agree ).

We used the same 18 items as in Study 1 to assess personal branding. Chronbach’s alpha was 0.90. The alphas for the three factors of the scale (strategic, differentiated, and technologically savvy) were 0.82, 0.76, and 0.88, respectively. As we were interested in overall personal branding behavior rather than its subfactors, we chose to stay at the higher scale level.

Personal branding intention was measured with two modified items similar to the ones used in a study of pro-environmental behavior based on the TPB ( de Leeuw et al., 2015 ). The items “I am determined to engage in personal branding behaviors on a regular basis” and “I have the will to engage in personal branding behaviors on a regular basis” were sufficiently highly correlated to demonstrate the stability of this scale ( r = 0.82, p < 0.001). We provided the definition of personal branding, used in this paper, to the respondents before they answered these questions.

Perceived Employability

We employed the same five-item scale to assess perceived employability. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.89.

Career achievement aspiration was measured with a six-item scale developed by Kim et al. (2016) for their studies of college women in Korea. As they voiced concerns around using reverse-scored items in studies in intercultural context, we chose to follow their advice to use a shorter scale vs. the original eight-item scale ( Gregor and O’Brien, 2016 ) as it demonstrated good reliability and validity in that Korean study. An example item was “I plan to obtain many promotions in my organization or business.” Cronbach’s alpha was 0.87.

Career feedback was measured with the four-item career improvement subscale of the career goal feedback scale ( Hu et al., 2017 ). A distinguishing feature of this scale was that the items were negatively worded, and hence were reverse scored for the analysis. An example item was “I do not get helpful advice from others about how I can reach my career goals.” Cronbach’s alpha was 0.91.

Career self-efficacy was measured by the seven-item scale developed by Dobrow and Higgins (2005) . An example item is “I believe that I can do what I need to do in order to make my career successful.” Cronbach’s alpha was 0.92.

The model in Figure 1 was tested in two steps, similar to the strategy of analysis employed in Study 1. There were differences in how we executed Step 2. We performed the SEM analysis on a partial disaggregation model ( Bagozzi and Edwards, 1998 ) by creating parcels of items theoretically related to each other as suggested by Little et al. (2013) . A large number of items can cause parameter instability related to the possibility of multiple solutions, cross-loadings, and correlated residuals, especially in a small sample such as ours ( Little et al., 2002 ). Parceling results in more stable model solutions, improves the variable-to-sample ratio, remedies small sample sizes, decreases the likelihood of correlated residuals and dual factor loadings, and reduces Type I errors in the item correlations ( Bagozzi and Edwards, 1998 ; Little et al., 2013 ). To estimate the indirect effects and mitigate the impact of multivariate non-normality of the data, we used the same bootstrapping procedures as in Study 1.

In order to test the factor structure of our model, we tested several measurement models with the parcels tapping the six latent variables (career achievement aspiration, career feedback, career self-efficacy, personal branding intention, personal branding, and perceived employability). Since some of the alternative models had comparable fit indices and degrees of freedom, we employed Akaike’s information criterion (AIC) index for the proposed and alternative models ( Bozdogan, 1987 ). The AIC is useful for model comparison as it favors the more parsimonious models, while providing no information on the fit of a particular model. In general, the model with the lowest AIC is considered to have the best fit. As shown in Table 4 , the measurement model with six latent factors showed the best fit to the data and was therefore chosen for further analyses. All the items had significant loadings on the intended factors (range λ = 0.64–0.94, p ’s < 0.001).

Goodness of fit and comparative indices of the proposed and alternative measurement models (Study 2).

χ 2 values are at p < 0.001; RMSEA values are at p close < 0.001 except * p close = 0.007. All the chi-square differences against the baseline six-factor model are significant at p < 0.001 .

Table 5 presents the variables’ means, standard deviations (SD), correlations, and reliability measures of the scales. Personal branding, as expected, was highly and significantly correlated with other career-related constructs: perceived employability ( r = 0.60, p < 0.001), career achievement aspiration ( r = 0.57, p < 0.001), and career self-efficacy ( r = 0.56, p < 0.001).

Study 2 variables’ means ( M ), standard deviations (SD), and correlations.

N = 214. The Cronbach’s alphas are displayed in bold on the diagonal .

p < 0.001 .

To identify the best model for the analyses, we compared the fit of several theoretically plausible models. Model 1 tested the originally hypothesized relationships as depicted in Figure 2 . In Model 2, we tested the full mediation model between career self-efficacy and personal branding. In Model 3, we added direct paths from all the antecedents to personal branding. In Model 4, we removed a direct path in between career feedback and personal branding. In Model 5, we tested full mediation between all the antecedent variables and personal branding. As we see from the results of the models testing shown in Table 6 , Model 3 demonstrated both the lowest AIC and better fit indices across the baseline and the alternative models tested, and it was significantly different from the baseline model (Δ χ 2 = 19.24, df = 2, p < 0.001). Hence, we proceeded with testing the model represented in Figure 2 .

Maximum likelihood estimates for the personal branding model. Solid lines indicate significant paths; dashed lines indicate non-significant paths. Standardized beta weights are reported. N = 214. *** p < 0.001.

Goodness of fit and comparative indices of the proposed and alternative models (Study 2).

RMSEA values are at p close < 0.001. All the chi-square differences among the four models are significant at p < 0.001, except for the difference between Models 3 and 4 (Δχ 2 = 3.17, df = 1, p = 0.07) .

The hypothesized structural model did explain variance in personal branding intention ( R 2 = 48.4%), in personal branding ( R 2 = 88.1%), and in perceived employability ( R 2 = 76.8%). Career achievement aspiration was positively related to personal branding intention ( γ = 0.58, p < 0.001), career feedback was negatively related ( γ = −0.28, p < 0.001), and the relationship between career self-efficacy and personal branding intention was not significant ( γ = 0.04, p = 0.69). Therefore, Hypothesis 2a was supported, while 2b and 2c were not. Career self-efficacy was positively related to personal branding ( γ = 0.30, p < 0.001), supporting Hypothesis 3. The analyses provided support to Hypothesis 4 that personal branding intention is positively related to personal branding ( β = 0.32, p < 0.001). Testing the mediating effects of personal branding intention, we found that career achievement aspiration had a significant indirect effect on personal branding [ indirect effect = 0.11, 95% CI (0.11; 0.44)]. The indirect effect of career feedback was significant but negligible [ indirect effect = −0.04, 95% CI (−0.08; −0.01)], and that of career self-efficacy was not significant [ indirect effect = 0.01, 95% CI (−0.05; 0.06)]. Thus, Hypotheses 5a and 5b were supported, while Hypothesis 5c was not. Estimating the effects of sequential mediation between the antecedents and perceived employability, we found that career achievement aspiration indirectly positively influenced perceived employability via personal branding intention and personal branding [ indirect effect = 0.16, 95% CI (0.08; 0.27)], while career feedback had a negligible negative effect [ indirect effect = −0.06, 95% CI (−0.11; −0.02)] and career self-efficacy had a non-significant effect [ indirect effect = 0.01, 95% CI (−0.07; 0.08)]. These results supported Hypothesis 6a and did not support Hypotheses 6b and 6c.

Additionally, we estimated the indirect effects of career achievement aspiration and career self-efficacy on perceived employability via personal branding. The results indicated significant positive relationships: indirect effect = 0.36, 95% CI (0.15; 0.63) and indirect effect = 0.30, 95% CI (0.04; 0.46), respectively.

The purpose of Study 2 was to examine the antecedents of personal branding. Career achievement aspiration was the strongest predictor of the personal branding intention. Thus, the attitudinal disposition, as explained by the TPB, was the leading indicator for the personal branding behavior. Career achievement aspiration was also strongly related to personal branding, eventually leading to greater perceived employability, confirming the importance of attitudinal disposition for proactive career behavior.

We observed that the societal norm around personal branding has not been settled yet, especially outside the Western contexts ( Phua and Caras, 2008 ; Saleem and Iglesias, 2015 ), which could explain the negative relationship between career feedback and personal branding intention. Those who receive a lot of career advice (and, therefore, enjoy career help from own network) may have a lower need to engage in personal branding. Our results were consistent with previous studies: a negative relationship was found between feedback on improvement needed and career exploration ( Hu et al., 2018 ), and a positive relationship was found between negative career feedback and career goal disengagement and lowering career goals ( Hu et al., 2019 ). Additionally, we can suppose that people receive and act upon career feedback from more experienced contacts who were likely to become successful in the traditional career models. Therefore, it is plausible to suppose that personal branding is not career advice that people get, and since ignoring the advisors’ recommendations carries relational penalties for the seekers ( Blunden et al., 2019 ), they do not engage in personal branding as an action competing for time and resources to whatever other advice is received.

Lastly, personal branding is still an emerging career competence ( Gorbatov et al., 2018 ) requiring specific competencies, such as technological, metacognitive, creative, and critical skills ( Lorgnier and O’Rourke, 2011 ). Yet, career success still can be achieved via traditional mechanisms, especially within organizations ( McDonald and Hite, 2005 ). This could explain the non-significant relationship between career self-efficacy and the personal branding intention (it was measured with two items specifically asking about the intent to perform personal branding activities). However, given significant indirect effect of career self-efficacy on perceived employability through personal branding, we can conclude that people do engage in personal branding but may not call it by that term.

General Discussion

To better understand predictors and outcomes of personal branding, we conducted two studies, drawing on the contemporary career theory ( Arthur, 2008 ), proactive behavior literature ( Crant, 2000 ; Seibert et al., 2001a ), and the TPB ( Ajzen, 1991 ). The studies tested the antecedents and outcomes of personal branding, providing quantitative evidence for its important role for individual career success in the context of contemporary work environment.

Theoretical Implications

With this paper, we attempted to expand our collective knowledge of proactive career behaviors, such as personal branding, in the context of contemporary work relations. As the notion of career success changes to be seen as a dynamic, context-dependent social construction ( Dries et al., 2008 ), we tried to address the need to examine the relationship between the contemporary view of career success and personal branding that has become “a prominent feature of the labor market, whether in face-to-face settings or in online platforms” ( Vallas and Christin, 2018 , p. 12). We were inspired by prior research to do so: Roberts (2005) indicated that further research was needed on the “bottom-up tactics” in today’s work environment, Wang and Wanberg (2017) specifically called for more empirical studies of the consequences of engaging in the “gig economy,” while Sullivan and Baruch (2009) urged to extend the career research beyond the Western context.

We also hoped to advance the career theory by examining the ontology of the relationships between personal branding and other career phenomena. In application of the TPB, we focused on the individual drivers leading to personal branding. Earlier research identified other attitudinal antecedents for constructing a positive personal reputation, such as desire for rewards or need to belong ( Zinko and Rubin, 2015 ). Our findings that the attitudinal predisposition, namely career achievement aspiration, was the principal antecedent to personal branding in our study adds to the understanding of why people engage in personal branding. In both studies, personal branding was positively related to perceived employability and career satisfaction, both of which are measures of career success ( Boudreau et al., 2001 ; Arthur et al., 2005 ; Ng et al., 2005 ; Greenhaus et al., 2008 ).

Finally, by providing a generic, reliable, and valid scale to measure personal branding we hope to encourage other scholars in the field to partake in personal branding research. Given the changes in the way people work today that we mentioned in the introduction, more quantitative research is needed to understand how workers and job seekers construct, package, and present their work identities to the target audiences.

Limitations and Future Research Directions

Like most research, this study had several limitations. First, although the mediation effects found in Study 1 were in line with the extant research (e.g., Dacre Pool and Qualter, 2013 ), the data in both studies were cross-sectional, thus precluding us from claiming causal inferences and being more susceptible to common method bias. All our three samples relied on the same methodology: self-report surveys. We did our best to mitigate this limitation by conducting the studies in different cultural settings and testing alternative models, which showed a worse fit than the mediation models. Further longitudinal and experimental research is needed to examine the causal nature of the personal branding-career satisfaction relationship, while at the same time accounting for the common method bias. Adding alternative sources of data, such as supervisor assessment or recruiter evaluation, will provide valuable insights on the effectiveness of personal branding.

A second limitation of our study was that the organizational context was out of its scope. Gorbatov et al. (2018) provided a list of work fields ranging from most to least conducive to personal branding, signaling that such activities may develop differently in diverse industry and firm settings. The professional role should also be accounted for, as, for example, freelance workers are more likely to engage in personal branding activities ( Gandini, 2016 ). The context in which certain behaviors take place typically serves as a moderator (see, e.g., Sully De Luque and Sommer, 2000 ) or a mediator (see, e.g., Liden et al., 2014 ). Therefore, it is highly advisable that future research explore such moderating and/or mediating effects of the context, in which personal branding occurs.

A third limitation was that we explored only the positive consequences of personal branding for individual career seekers. However, several authors highlighted the “dark side” of personal branding, such as personal branding failures ( Labrecque et al., 2011 ), duress associated with the pervasive pressure to engage in personal branding ( Vallas and Cummins, 2015 ; Vallas and Christin, 2018 ), pushing the ethical boundaries of the professional field ( Cederberg, 2017 ), commodification of reflexivity ( Wee and Brooks, 2010 ), losing personal identity ( Holton and Molyneux, 2017 ), or, refusing to do so, failing to fit the organization sufficiently to produce a meaningful impact ( Shepherd, 2005 ; Sturdy and Wright, 2008 ). Future studies should investigate the deleterious impacts of personal branding for individuals, teams, and organizations.

Practical Implications

Since personal branding, as a contemporary career behavior, in both studies demonstrated strong relationships with career success, workers, job seekers, and employers, labor market intermediaries should invest in understanding what it means to them. For individuals, there is sufficient evidence that personal branding leads to a variety of beneficial outcomes, such as enhanced credibility, visibility, prestige, promotions, or monetary rewards ( Gorbatov et al., 2018 ). Whether organizations benefit from having employees actively engaging in personal branding is still a matter for further research. For students, personal branding could help in the university-to-work transition by contributing to their career identity ( Santisi et al., 2018 ). Finally, the personal branding scale could be a useful diagnostic instrument in a diversity of contexts, such as in training courses aimed to help the participants obtain a deeper insight into career decision-making.

Data Availability Statement

The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.

Ethics Statement

Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Written informed consent from the participants was not required to participate in this study in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements.

Author Contributions

SG is a Ph.D. candidate, who is the main author of the submitted paper. SK and EL are Ph.D. supervisors who helped SG design the studies. SG did the initial analysis of the literature, was responsible for all the data collection and analysis, and wrote the initial draft. In the consequent process, SK and EL helped to develop the paper toward the final submission.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Beau Scherpenzeel and Shiyao Tong for assisting with the data collection for the two studies reported in this paper.

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Old Practice, but Young Research Field: A Systematic Bibliographic Review of Personal Branding

Stefan scheidt, carsten gelhard, jörg henseler.

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Edited by: Carlos María Alcover, Rey Juan Carlos University, Spain

Reviewed by: Omid Kamran-Disfani, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, United States; Alejandro Amillano, University of Deusto, Spain

*Correspondence: Stefan Scheidt [email protected]

This article was submitted to Organizational Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

Received 2020 May 6; Accepted 2020 Jun 30; Collection date 2020.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Before engaging with the already intensive and still increasing personal branding activities in many fields of practice, a scholarly approach would call for a more specific definition of the concept of personal branding processes and the resulting human brands. A multi-step analysis of the growing body of literature on personal branding is employed, integrating a framework that covers six key research streams of personal branding, (1) terminology and definition, (2) underlying theories, (3) classes and categories, (4) benefits, (5) antecedents, and (6) key ingredients and applications, complemented by challenges the domain of personal branding has to cope with. The analysis shows that personal branding is an interdisciplinary concern, which is still in its infancy and in which universally valid personal branding frameworks or even theories cannot be identified yet. Personal branding appears as a source for new academic impulses, as it may sensitize scholars to opportunities for intensifying collaboration with practitioners and with other academic domains to enrich and disseminate knowledge in their fields.

Keywords: personal branding, personal brand, human brand, literature review, bibliographical analysis

Introduction

While “personal branding” and “human brands” as terms are a modern invention, the branding of individuals is as old as human interaction and society itself. Alexander the Great has been claimed as the first celebrity in human history (Braudy, 1997 ), the archetypal erudite Goethe achieved success by using all elements of the marketing mix in order to differentiate himself from other authors of his time (Bendisch et al., 2013 ), and Andy Warhol's “idea that ‘everyone will be famous for 15 min’ comments on a world where image reigns supreme” (Schroeder, 2005 , p. 1294). Personal branding has become a vital part of individuals, society, culture, and economy. Research has responded accordingly, with different academic disciplines converging on this subject over time, each focusing on many different aspects. Goffman ( 1956 ) described self-presentation as the intentional and tangible component of identity, human brands have been a defining characteristic of the broadening of the traditional concept of marketing (Kotler and Levy, 1969 ), and, from a social psychology perspective, rarity and stability affect celebrity authenticity (Moulard et al., 2015 ) to name just a few developments in the field.

Whereas personal branding as a term is a relatively recent invention, the reality behind it is not. The significant increase of scientific attention to personal branding, especially in the last 10 years, has given this contemporary phenomenon widespread, albeit fragmentary academic presence. Schau and Gilly ( 2003 ), investigating self-presentation in the Web 1.0 environment, and Thomson ( 2006 ), exploring why consumers form strong attachments to human brands, published the first scientific articles to empirically examine human brands. More and more empirical studies have been conducted in the field in the last few years (e.g., Parmentier et al., 2013 ; Hofmann et al., in press ), but they remain few and far between. Several personal branding frameworks have also been put forward, some based on these empirical studies (e.g., Khedher, 2019 ) and some on more conceptual work (e.g., Bendisch et al., 2013 ), but a comprehensive personal branding framework, let alone a sustainable theory, is yet sorely missing for academic purposes. Moreover, the key question as to whether science can “reclaim self-marketing and personal branding from the enthusiasts” (Shepherd, 2005 , p. 12) is still waiting for an academically valid answer.

As research is continually developing both in terms of breadth, going into new directions, e.g., studying bloggers and influencers in social media, and depth, with more studies covering well-known topics, such as brand attributes, it seems an opportune moment for an updated review of current literature. To address the mentioned lacuna, the objective of this paper tries to present an analysis of the growing body of literature on personal branding, covering its terminology and definitions, underlying theories, classes and categories, benefits, antecedents, key ingredients and applications as well as its challenges. In doing so, this review contributes significantly to the positioning of personal branding in the applied psychology, branding, and business research context by bundling fragmented ideas and structuring single key aspects. Such an approach complements to the interdisciplinary review on personal branding by Gorbatov et al. ( 2018 ), systematically links the underlying and existing body of knowledge and opens avenues for future novel research (Palmatier et al., 2018 ).

Methodology

The fragmented and not clearly arranged field of knowledge in personal branding does not benefit from providing merely a more comprehensive overview on existing literature. Rather, we aim to identify trends and key research streams in personal branding resulting in constructive criticism of existing work and avenues for future research. Therefore, a structured approach that implies a bibliographic analysis in its core is suited for the method of choice (Paul and Singh, 2017 ; Ferreira, 2018 ).

The current body of literature on the subject to be studied has been surveyed systematically (works published before 31 December 2019), complementing this bibliographical data with substance-centered research in a loop of cross-fertilization that enriched both perspectives ( Figure 1 ).

Review methodology process.

During pre-analysis a pilot study was conducted in which chosen experts, such as top managers responsible for corporate HR, HR managers doing recruitment and development at managerial level, and professionals who deliver communication services for CEOs and other branded individuals were invited to join several discussions (see Table 1 ). This first step was used initially to improve awareness of previous research into the branding of individuals. It revealed the following set of key terms for further enquiry: “personal brand,” “human brand,” “self-marketing,” “self-branding,” and “personal marketing.”

The expert sample group.

For the purposes of the main analysis, the chosen terms were applied in a search of the titles, abstracts, and keywords of articles in the English language. This analysis required good coverage of branding- and business-related research in multiple disciplines, for which SCOPUS and ScienceDirect are suitable and popular databases.

Following this first search and to ensure the most exhaustive literature review possible, the ancestry approach (Cooper, 1989 , 2010 ; Atkinson et al., 2015 ) was applied to identify additional articles. This backward search uncovers new articles of interest that meet the criteria by examining the citations and the reference list of the articles already available to the researchers (e.g., Cornwell and Maignan, 1998 ; Xyrichis and Lowton, 2008 ; Filo et al., 2015 ). To compensate for the main limitation of the ancestry approach, i.e., its one-sided retrospective direction, citation research (cited by) via SCOPUS and GoogleScholar was conducted as a forward search on all academic articles to cover relevant later citations. In addition, articles published after 2019, but before the manuscript was finalized were added to the review. In total, 518 articles were included in this review whose publication started in 1969 and increased significantly after the mid-2000s ( Figure 2 ).

Publication of academic articles with relevance to personal branding over time.

The following subject matter research analyzed and matched the articles with each other via a fine-grained and critical reading to support both an immediate check of the thematic relevance of the articles and identification of the key topics in personal branding.

Six key research streams were identified and served as a framework to investigate the chosen articles with a view to relevant key topics ( Table 2 ). (1) It opens by reviewing what a human brand and personal branding respectively are, proposing updated terminologies and definitions; (2) This leads to a consideration of the main psychological theories in their application to personal branding; (3) Followed by an examination of the classes and categories in which personal branding is applied by highlighting the difference between celebrities, icons, and branded ordinary people; (4) The benefits of personal branding reveal its importance for the branded individual as well as for stakeholders; (5) It then focuses on the antecedents of the contemporary phenomenon of personal branding, answering the question of the reasons for which it has been spreading; (6) Key ingredients and applications indicate how human brands emerge and how it is applied in a branding context and beyond. Subsequently, the challenges that appear with personal branding have been elaborated, as a critical view on personal branding is needed to support a responsible and conceptually meaningful development of future concepts and theories.

The structure of scholarly knowledge on personal branding: research streams, concepts, and contributions.

What Is a Human Brand? What Is Personal Branding?

Terminology.

The branding of individuals has introduced a diverse set of new terms into the jargon of professionals and academics alike. Brand You (Peters, 1999 ), Brand Yourself (Andrusia and Haskins, 2000 ), and me Inc (Peters, 1999 ) are neologisms introduced by marketers and professionals who focus primarily on a person-centered approach “constructing a product based on themselves that can then be marketed as effectively as possible” (Shepherd, 2005 , p. 6). At the same time, academic efforts in this field suffer from a lack of consistent terminology, with terms such as self-branding, self-marketing, or corporate personhood. However, personal branding and, to a limited extent, human branding remain the most frequently used and accepted terms. “Personal branding” was coined in 1997 by Tom Peters in the Fast Company Magazine. Although Peters did not give an explanation or definition, “the phrase ‘personal branding’ is now fairly well established, and more consistently used” (Shepherd, 2005 , p. 2), which can be confirmed by the research produced for this literature review.

Definitions

Personal branding and its various synonyms are frequently used without any explicit or even consistent definitions of the term, giving rise to a certain degree of terminological fuzziness. A deeper investigation of the definitions identifies, nonetheless, some common ground and suggests a conceptual approach based on three pillars: First, what the branded individual brings in. This implies personal qualifications, such as skills, competencies, experience, or expertise. Second, a focus on the audience or specific target groups and their perceptions of the branded person and relevant associations. This aspect ranges from few specific definitions, such as “the employee trying to impress his boss” (Kotler and Levy, 1969 , p. 12) and psychologists' “clients” (Cederberg, 2017 ) to mostly very abstract circumscriptions like “who you are to the world around you” (Philbrick and Cleveland, 2015 , p. 183) or “to a target audience” (Parmentier et al., 2013 , p. 382). Third, differentiation appears as the end product, and the process of personal branding aims to produce a distinction from peers by leveraging one's points of difference and defining individual unique selling proposition. Beside this conceptual triangle, a strong focus on career and employment as well as the commercialization of the branded individual can be identified as other particularly key aspects.

A distinction between the process, i.e., personal branding, and the thing, i.e., the human brand, is obvious and can traced back to the differing philosophies of Heraclitus and Democritus (Rescher, 1996 ). However, a large majority of the reviewed articles do not distinguish clearly between these two perspectives. In this vein, confusion arises as “personal branding” serves as a term for the entire phenomenon of the branding of individuals, whereas “personal brand” is used to describe the outcome of personal branding in general as well as the class of ordinary people and field-specific individuals who do not own a celebrity status.

On the whole, updated definitions for the contemporary phenomenon of personal branding and its statement as a resulting brand need to be determined. Therefore, the following definitions can be proposed: “Personal branding” could remain as a term from a process perspective and, thus, is the entire process of establishing, maintaining, and developing an individual's human brand . It includes the active and selective integration of certain personal preconditions with due consideration for the changing nature of the field in which the human brand is to be established. In order to resolve terminological confusion, “human brand” could serve as a general term for the brand that results from a personal branding process, independent of class. In this sense, a human brand is an intangible asset linked to a person, which generates economic and social value through its visibility as a result of a personal branding process . Whereas, the personal branding process is a collective act between stakeholders and the branded individual's entire personality, visibility is expected to arise within and beyond her/his professional field to stand apart from other human brands and to fit into a defined target market. All aspects of the definitions proposed before will be considered during the course of this literature review.

Underlying Theories

Not surprisingly, scholars refer to theories and concepts from the discipline of branding in their understanding of personal branding, such as Keller's ( 1993 ) customer-based brand equity model that serves as a basis for the concept of athletes' brand images (Arai et al., 2014 ) and the idea of human brand equity for football players (Parmentier and Fischer, 2012 ) or the model of establishing points of differentiation and points of parity (Keller et al., 2002 ). However, the interdisciplinary domain of personal branding does not only call for a broader approach in underlying theories and concepts. Rather, theories specifically from psychology are used to do justice to the components “personal” or “human” in personal branding and human brand.

Attachment Theory

This psychological, evolutionary and ethological theory (Bowlby, 1969 ) serves as a foundation for a detailed investigation into personal branding, as “understanding how to create or intensify attachments could offer both an effective and an economical means of achieving stronger marketing relationships that may prevent consumer defections, increase consumers' forgiveness in the face of negative information, and can predict brand loyalty and willingness to pay” (Thomson, 2006 , p. 105). Whereas, autonomy, relatedness, and competence serve as antecedents of the strength of people's attachment to human brands, Loroz and Braig ( 2015 ) create an empirically more comprehensive and sophisticated picture of consumer attachments to human brands. Thus, the importance of the competence dimension to develop strong human brand attachment depends on the extent to which the human brand maintains competence. In addition, brand appeal, consistent focus, and longevity are effective moderators of human brand attachment strength and dimensions such as favorability, originality, and clarity should be included for a broader understanding of human brands.

Self-Determination Theory

Regarding the perception of a celebrity's authenticity (Moulard et al., 2015 ), self-determination theory in its focus on human motivation and personality proposes that intrinsically motivated behavior is “authentic in the fullest sense of those terms” (Ryan and Deci, 2000 , p. 74). Intrinsic motivation in turn is characterized by participation in an activity for its inherent satisfaction of three innate psychological needs that are essential for optimal functioning: autonomy (i.e., need to perceive origin of source of one's own behavior), relatedness (i.e., need to feel connected with others), and competence (i.e., need to have an effect on one's outcomes and surroundings). Autonomy, relatedness, and competence are therefore assumed to be prerequisites for the authenticity of celebrities.

Attribution Theory

Derived from attribution theory, rarity and stability are suggested as the main components of human brands (Moulard et al., 2015 ) as they are expected to contribute to authenticity. The augmentation principle within the attribution theory is used to derive rarity, since it states that that actions that involve costs, risks, or sacrifices (i.e., nonconforming behaviors) are more likely to be attributed to the person than to external causes. This hypothesis is grounded in the idea that it is often difficult to express one's true self, with social pressure causing most people to adapt to the norm. Therefore, it is difficult to “go against the grain” because social acceptance is less likely to be achieved. People who do so are more likely to be perceived as intrinsically motivated. This idea is in line with previous research (Anton, 2001 ; Vannini and Franzese, 2008 ) indicating that social conformity and impression management are the antithesis of authenticity. Stability, in turn, is justified on the grounds that similar behavior in various situations and similar behavior in response to distinct stimuli/units may collapse to similar behavior over time. Thus, consumers' perceptions of a celebrity's authenticity are driven by the fact that that the behavior is unique to that person and is stable over time. Concerning the age of the celebrities' target group, younger people are more likely to rely on rarity than older people when judging the authenticity of celebrities, while older people rely primarily on stability when assessing the authenticity of a celebrity. Consequently, a celebrity's authenticity is influenced by the rarity and stability antecedents, yet the relative weights of these antecedents evolve with age.

Social Identity Theory

According to this theory originally formulated by social psychologists, consumers demonstrate membership in a particular social category by associating themselves with a personal brand, thus creating a social identity. Carlson and Donavan ( 2013 ) investigated the extent to which brand personality attributes of professional athletes influence consumer-brand relationships with a professional sports team. They used social identity theory as a framework for a model that predicts consumer connections with athletes and the team, retail spending and number of games watched. According to social identity theory, self-categorization into a group serves a self-definitional role that helps individuals make sense of the world (Tajfel and Turner, 1985 ; Hogg et al., 1995 ). Social identification serves as a source of self-esteem that should be enhanced by membership in a valued group. Here, strong identification with the group should go hand in hand with positive evaluation of the ingroup (Leary and Tangney, 2012 ). Consequently, consumers are drawn to sports teams that have a strong “similarity” to their own actual or ideal self (Madrigal and Chen, 2008 ; Carlson et al., 2009 ; Fink et al., 2009 ). Carlson and Donavan ( 2013 ) suggest that likewise, consumers should be drawn to individual athletes perceived to be similar to their own actual or ideal self. They identify with famous athletes because they are perceived to be symbolic of desirable reference groups and being associated with the athlete's brand personality attributes may enhance their own self-image. Additionally, consumers are more likely to identify with a player who is perceived to be both prestigious and distinctive. These findings are in line with social identity theory, which suggests people seek to differentiate themselves from others in social contexts and are thus likely to affiliate with entities that enhance their self-esteem (Tajfel and Turner, 1985 ; Leary and Tangney, 2012 ). In contrast to more traditional brands, human brands have the unique opportunity to successfully differentiate themselves from the consumer's perspective and to offer social identification even through negative characteristics. The image of being rebellious is often perceived as being highly desirable since, for instance, many celebrities and athletes are very popular among consumers because of their negative “bad boy” or “bad girl” images (Burton et al., 2001 ).

Cue Utilization Theory

An application of cue utilization theory enables to differ between intrinsic and extrinsic cues of human brands which is comparable to Keller's ( 1993 ) distinction between product-related, i.e., a product's physical composition, and non-product-related brand attributes, e.g., price and packaging. Investigating artist brands from the point of view of cue utilization theory (Moulard et al., 2014 ) the appearance and the quality of the artwork itself can be conceptualized as an intrinsic cue whereas the attitude toward the artist, or the artist's brand equity, can be conceptualized as an extrinsic cue. Doctoral candidates' brand attributes are categorized into intrinsic and extrinsic cues, each with a positive impact on certain aspects of the candidates' job search process (Close et al., 2011 ). Whereas, the candidates' research productivity and dissertation progress are attributed to the intrinsic cues, the extrinsic cues are represented by granting faculty research productivity, advisor research productivity, and doctoral consortium attendance. Additionally, doctoral candidates' publications in top ranked journals strengthen the confidence that a candidate's publication in a particular journal meets a certain quality standard and thus served as important predictors of the candidate's placement success. This is consistent with the cue utilization theory, suggesting that some cues have higher predictive and confidence values than other cues (Olson, 1977 ; Richardson et al., 1994 ), and that cues with such high values are given the greatest weight in assessing quality. The predictive value of a cue is directly connected to the degree to which the evaluators associate the cue with quality.

Structuration Theory

This theory explains how social systems are created and reproduced through the engagement of structure and individual's, group's or organization's behavior (Giddens, 1984 ) and is utilized to explore the extent that celebrities' human brand can emancipate themselves from a character they are associated with (Lindridge and Eagar, 2015 ). Exemplarily applied to the late singer, songwriter and actor David Bowie, the structure of his human brand can be understood through the interactions and knowledge between so-called “agents,” i.e., producers, managers, agents, publicists and the entire machinery of the music industry, who work with and sometimes even force the artists to construct and perform their persona. Consequently agents' behaviors are not only determined by the structure that they exist within but are also constantly recreated and adapted through differing time periods. Emphasizing the question about the ownership of a human brand and its characters leads to the recognition of celebrities as image-creators and -prisoners depending on which agents hold the power to influence image associations. In this respect, structuring theory is expected to enable scholars to deal with this conflict by considering how agents within the structure can influence the agency of a human brand, leading to an “ongoing negotiation between the different agents within the celebrity structure” (Turner, 2004 ).

Classes and Categories

Regarding the fact that scholars primarily use the term “personal brand” when considering or investigating ordinary people as brands, three different classes of human brands are proposed: the celebrity, the personal brand, and the icon.

Celebrities, defined as “part of the social elite who engage in the public relations machine of television and movie roles, special event appearances and talk show and gossip magazine placements” (Lunardo et al., 2015 , p. 687), enjoy great popularity in personal branding among both practitioners and scholars. While the very first empirical studies of personal branding targeted celebrities (Thomson, 2006 ), recent investigations have evolved to form a separate interdisciplinary research area beyond a personal branding perspective, particularly in the last few years, as expressed in its publication platform in the Celebrity Studies journal. Nonetheless, the search through key terms in this review resulted in 83 articles that focus on celebrities confirming the manifest interest of scholars in investigating them.

The chronological aspect of the demographics of celebrity culture comes into play when turning to the branding of ordinary people. Because of the contradictory forces affecting media visibility, namely the need for constant renewal and the competition for that scarce resource that is public attention, there is a rapid turnover of celebrities in the media. Whereas, traditional media, such as television, radio, and newspapers, had been the exclusive domain of corporate entities and celebrities, social media allows all individuals to create their own unique virtual spaces and to reach broader audiences irrespective of time or place. How much room is there for celebrities to not fall out from the celebrity zone and step into the zone of ordinary human brands, i.e., personal brands? In turn, micro-celebrities appear as an intermediate stage during the transition from a personal brand to celebrity status (Khamis et al., 2017 ) enabled by social media.

Finally, the icon is a legitimate cultural symbol of personal achievement and societal values. While celebrities, for a period of time, own the symbolic meanings associated with their private and public selves, icons experience a convergence and transformation of meanings across time, reflecting wider cultural concerns. Celebrities transition into icons when their fame endures through the transformation of their cultural meaning and values that mirror changes in society (Lindridge and Eagar, 2015 ). Even if terms such as “superstar” and “idol” (Epstein, 2005 ) may confirm that a consistent separation does not exist, an icon stands out from the crowd of an increasing number of celebrities.

Scholars tend to prioritize some areas in their research, while others still lack scholarly attention ( Table 3 ) regarding the assignment of three human brand classes to 11 different categories (see Appendix 1 ).

Number of publications focusing on three different classes of human brands in eleven different categories.

By reason of the increasing presence in the public and in the media, celebrities are no longer limited to actors and musicians. It covers athletes, business persons, technology entrepreneurs, politicians, scientists, and others as well (Moulard et al., 2015 ). Celebrities are primarily studied in the sports category, such as Andy Murray, and in politics, for example Kevin Rudd and Donald Trump. However, performing artists, such as Oprah Winfrey, represent the largest category of celebrities being investigated. Whereas, these three categories mirror the high level of attention they have in the media, royals or the family members of higher or lower aristocracy have rarely yet been targeted by scholarly interest. In a similar vein, visual artists, business managers, and content creators have been the subject of only few studies of celebrities, despite their intense visibility in different kinds of media.

Personal brands in the category of content creators have been facing increasing scholarly interest in the last few years, especially journalists, bloggers, and YouTubers. Similarly, professors and students face intense academic attention, which might simply be caused by the ready availability of the sample group. Whereas, personal brands in the sports category emphasize the athlete in general, numerous different jobs have been studied in the professional services, such as doctors and nurses in the medical field, psychologists, librarians, and engineers. Business managers, for example CEOs, represent another category studied more frequently. However, the personal brands in the categories of the producers of hedonic products and the aristocracy suffer from a lack of scholarly interest.

The number of branded individuals being labeled and studied as icons is very low so far, which mirrors their hardly existing availability for research efforts. British royals as human brands, for example, serve as “iconic British symbols” (Otnes and Maclaran, 2018 , p. 9). Ziggy Stardust, a character derived from the performance persona of David Bowie, represents “a powerful icon of a time, place, ethos and subculture that would never age and is infinitely replicable and symbolically malleable, in ways that the celebrity cannot reproduce” (Lindridge and Eagar, 2015 , p. 24). David Beckham, who embraces multiple masculinities, including the romantic and compassionate husband, the hands-on father, the football legend, and the fashionable style icon (Cocker et al., 2015 ), mirrors a societal shift in positioning himself as a metrosexual human (Parmentier and Fischer, 2012 ).

Nonetheless, the category of aristocracy in general is still an under-investigated area that calls for deeper investigation, similar to some others. Although Kotler and Levy ( 1969 , p.10) already stated that “political contests remind us that candidates are marketed as well as soap,” and despite the fact that political marketing is big business, particularly in the United States, and that it attracts sophisticated investigation from scholars (e.g., Butler and Harris, 2009 ; Hughes and Dann, 2009 ; Algara, 2019 ), the personal branding of politicians still lacks empiric consideration (Harris and Rae, 2011 ; Gershon, 2014 ). In same vein, the art market offers numerous well-known brands of visual artists, like Dali, Picasso, van Gogh, Rembrandt, or Warhol, all of whom are imbued with celebrity status (Schroeder, 2005 ; Fillis, 2015 ).

Benefits of Personal Branding

First and foremost, the branded individual benefits generally from personal branding when competing for work, seeking advancement in specific occupations or professions, or pursuing a career path that leads to higher financial earnings. This fundamental advantage includes other specific aspects, such as lucrative endorsement opportunities for athletes, the self-branded business ventures of celebrities, or entry-level placement as well as entry salary premiums in the marketing job market. While these benefits are closely linked to differentiation as a consequence of personal branding and can be traced back to the idea of a new world of work, personal branding is thought to offer some impact to the individual personality as well. Continuous self-reflection throughout the personal branding process may lead to continuous learning and thus enable the branded individuals to improve their abilities and achieve much greater self-awareness, self-esteem, self-confidentiality, and self-worth. Visibility acts as a beneficial consequence of personal branding too, enhancing social capital for the branded individual.

Turning to the target groups of personal branding, human brands as endorsers are a major force driving retail sales when products are associated with them. In the art market in particular, personal branding serves as a means for reducing risks and increasing the willingness to pay a premium price. Beside commercial considerations, psychological aspects are of interest, such as consumer-human brand attachment that may advance identity construction. Celebrities complement or even replace the family system for identity construction of young people. The family system and the family subsystem are interconnected to satisfy the basic human needs of belonging, autonomy and distinctiveness, all of which are essential for identity development (Scabini and Manzi, 2011 ). The fulfillment of psychological needs, such as autonomy, relatedness, or competence as well as appearance attractiveness seems to be of great importance in the transition from parental attachment to idol attachment for young people especially. Identity includes, but is not limited to gender, race, ethnicity, spirituality, sexuality, and social class (Dillon et al., 2011 ). The latter has not been at the forefront of the marketing literature on celebrity but is an important part of the appeal of many celebrity brands and, thus, a crucial factor for identity construction at consumer side. For instance, several working-class celebrities based in Britain, such as Kerry Katona, Jade Goody and Wayne Rooney, have labeled themselves ‘chav’ and have become figures of national misery or disgust. The term ‘chav’ has been described as the “ubiquitous term of abuse against the white poor” (Tyler, 2008 , p. 17), which has been used to mock and deride the appearance, accent, clothing, lifestyle and culture of working class men and women in Britain (Tyler, 2008 ). The example of the “celebrity chav” indicates that the social class cannot be understood only from the point of view of economic capital and therefore offers a broad approach for consumer identity construction.

Many scholars suggest the presence of co-branding following from personal branding activities, for example between ordinary employees or CEOs and companies. Furthermore, due to spill-over and meaning transfer, deliberate and unintentional effects may arise between human brands, corporate brands, and product brands. For example, the entire artistic brand, from which consumers derive their judgements about the uncertain product quality of the artwork, results from spill-over effects between an artist's human brand and the artist's artwork (Moulard et al., 2014 ).

Some first indications that personal branding impacts society can be found, as e.g., David Bowie's societal and cultural relevance is also obvious “by sanctioning his homosexuality as an important socio-cultural statement and response to Britain's post-industrial decline” (Lindridge and Eagar, 2015 , p. 23).

Antecedents of Personal Branding

From today's point of view, the branding of individuals is an old practice that has produced numerous examples in human memory, such as Alexander the Great (Braudy, 1997 ) and savant Goethe (Bendisch et al., 2013 ). An analysis of 18th century auction records serves as an additional example and revealed that artists have always been branded as the prices for their artworks was determined by their reputation and status in society (Preece and Kerrigan, 2015 ). It is obvious that there has been a long history during which celebrity was attained through family relationships or achieved through talent (Rojek, 2012 ). However, the affair of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in 1963 has been identified as “an insightful turning point, marking a juncture whereby the public were seen to have become more interested in one particular celebrity's private life than her abilities as an actress” (Mills et al., 2015 , p. 5). As such, contemporary personal branding has not just become more media-driven, complex, and multilayered. However, it finds its most effective antecedents only in the recent past. The joint impact of societal, economic, and technological developments provide three key areas that have given rise to the emergence of ubiquitous personal branding.

First, the development of the new world of work means a transformation from an industrial to an information-based economy, with the spread of neoliberal capitalism and increasing complexity. Massive changes and turbulences were caused by the mass layoffs of the 1970s, followed in the late 20th and early 21st century by “economic globalization, new arenas of competition, and rapidly evolving information technologies” (Lair et al., 2005 , p. 311). As a result, powerful social norms and pressures that promised stability in uncertain environments have become unstable. Individuals could no longer depend on employers to be “guarantors of life-long employment and personal economic stability” (Philbrick and Cleveland, 2015 , p. 182). Competition for jobs increased, as careers became unpredictable, not limited to a single job description, and as traditional job applications based on a curriculum vitae became insufficient. “Hiring, as a consequence of these changes, has become a matter of choosing potential employees who signal that they are managing themselves correctly, replete with expandable skills, useful alliances, and appropriate branding strategies” (Gershon, 2014 , p. 288). People offering their abilities, skills, and performance are in competition with each other, not dissimilar to the competition between products or services for attention in saturated markets. This need for personal responsibility and individual differentiation seems accompanied or exemplified by the emergence of the figure of the entrepreneur. Hearn ( 2008 , p. 201) states that “the overt practices of self-branding […] have their root in the rise of the networked organization and the entrepreneurial workplace” which is supported by other scholars (e.g., Gandini, 2016 ). Workers are encouraged to become enterprises in their own right in corporate employment or in a job application process. Thus, personal branding serves as a supportive tool in employment in times of neoliberal precariousness and as a “communicative response to economic uncertainty” (Lair et al., 2005 , p. 309).

Second, various forms of media have developed alongside the rise of the idea of visibility as a key currency in life. The explosion of the Web 2.0 and social media offers continuously evolving platforms for an emerging attention economy that self-branding is directly related to. Multiple media outlets enable personal branding for everyone, e.g., by searching on Google, sharing via Facebook, networking on LinkedIn, broadcasting on YouTube, or linking via Twitter to access and contribute to the story of the individual self. A key academic contribution that is frequently cited is the investigation of self-presentation in personal web space by Schau and Gilly ( 2003 ). They see the link between sociologist Erving Goffman's “presentation of self in everyday life” (Goffman, 1956 ) with the computer-mediated environment in that “personal Web sites allow consumers to self-present 24/7 beyond a regional setting to the virtual world” (Schau and Gilly, 2003 , p. 387), as building a digital self can be taken as par for the course. David Bowie became “the first artist in 1999 to release an album (‘The Hours’) through the Internet signifying Bowie's human brand innovation” (Lindridge and Eagar, 2015 , p. 21). With the development from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, online personal branding has mutated into an interactive and meaningful presence through the use of chat rooms, blogs, and other kinds of third-party sites. Ubiquity and user-friendliness, free and open access, crumbling technological barriers, and space for individuals are factors inviting self-expression and self-presentation—not least for purposes of personal branding. Broader audiences can be reached, irrespective of time or place, while branding in social media is migrating from being an exclusive business pursuit to allowing individuals to create their own unique virtual spaces. Consequently, cultural values change, with fame and attention gaining significant importance and people mutating into “gossip-hungry consumers” (Mills et al., 2015 , p. 1). Thus, “personal branding reflects one logical reaction to the cultural and political economics of Web 2.0” (Gehl, 2011 , p. 2).

Third, a new understanding of individualism developed as a countermovement to traditional collectivistic systems. Scholars claim that the symptoms and forms of individualism represent a reflection of the concept of humankind in its respective era. Under earlier forms of capitalism, for instance, workers provided their physical and mental capacities to the employer for a limited period of time each day. By contrast, in the era of neoliberalism, the individual now owns and treats herself/himself as a corporate business aiming to maintain her/his human capital, i.e., her/his collection of skills, assets, and alliances. The responsibility for self-fulfillment, self-reliance, self-sufficiency, self-actualization, and self-realization as fundamental psychological needs lies exclusively with the individual today, reinforced by the American myth. Realizing the American dream implies accepting a world of change and opportunities in which “you can create and recreate yourself so as to be the master of your own destiny” (Lair et al., 2005 , p. 314). This understanding of individualism is located as a difference that began to exist historically only within a broader system from the 1860s to the 1880s, in the wake of the Civil War in the US. At that time, people began to understand themselves as individuals individualized by their place within the system (Michaels, 1989 ). To the same degree of development, trust is eroding in any all-embracing system of determined norms and values, as the quest for identity fails when applying traditional collectivistic interpretations. Therefore, practitioners postulate the process of self-managed self-improvement as the means of choice, and the self-help movement appears as a precursor of personal branding.

Additionally, scholars (e.g., Shepherd, 2005 ) have identified existential angst as a driver and a major selling proposition for personal branding by consultants and counselors. The individual has to cope with the inevitability of building her/his human brand, as the otherwise inescapable consequence is “being marginalized or left behind” (Harris and Rae, 2011 , p. 14) and going “through a brand divorce” (Lair et al., 2005 , p. 329). Fear of losing one's livelihood is attended by the fear of losing human brand ownership, since someone else will manage the human brand if the individual does not do so himself or herself.

Nonetheless, the antecedents of personal branding have to be determined in more detail for different cultures and societies, e.g., comparing the US and Europe or considering traditional collectivistic societies such as Japan.

Derived from the review of the classes of human brands and antecedents of the personal branding movement, celebrities appear as the cradle from which human brands for ordinary people have sprung, due to the opportunities and needs produced by societal, economic, and technological developments. Icons, in turn, represent a select group containing long-lasting and outstanding branded individuals who stand out from the growing number of commoditized celebrities ( Figure 3 ).

Pyramid of different human brand classes and their appearance in the history of personal branding.

Key Ingredients and Applications

Beside numerous fragmented findings and concepts and some more general conceptual approaches, many scholars have come to agree on a small number of elements of what human brands may consist of and which fields of application they can be encountered in, partly based on empirical investigation.

Personality and Authenticity

At a very early stage of the personal branding process, one's personality, i.e., individual strengths and weaknesses, values, skills, expertise, and attributes, needs to be reflected in order to transform it into the human brand personality. Credibility and, in particular, authenticity are two attributes that are understood to represent the crucial ingredients for human brands. Authenticity affects attitudes toward the branded individual positively, which in turn is a critical component used in consumer judgments and decision-making. Consumers demonstrate an increased demand for authentic brands. An authentic human brand claims to represents the true self of the branded person and thus delivers a constant promise of value. Clarity as well as rarity, with its sub-dimensions of talent, discretion, and originality, contribute to authenticity and are closely linked to differentiation as a further key element of personal branding.

Differentiation

Most scholars tend to one-sidedly emphasize that the branded individual should differ from everybody else and, as such, neglect the points of parity (e.g., Chen, 2013 ). In contrast, Parmentier et al. ( 2013 ), who explored fashion models, identified points of differentiation to stand out from other competitors in terms of the amount and the quality of their field-specific cultural and social capital as well as points of parity that are visibly fitting in with the expectations of the field in which the human brand is competing. This is confirmed for first faculty positions in marketing as well (Close et al., 2011 ). Distinction does not necessarily have to have positive connotations. Even negative “bad boy” or “bad girl” images (Carlson and Donavan, 2013 ), the refusal to comply with societal conventions, or even scandals may lead to differentiation (Mills et al., 2015 ) and attention.

Above all, visibility is named as indispensable, following the key expectation “You need to get noticed” (Gander, 2014 , p. 101). On the one hand, a physical footprint is expected in the form of writing articles, speaking in public, extending one's network, giving presentations, or producing publications to create an offline self. On the other hand, a digital footprint leads to an online self by way of social media platforms, which obviously now plays a far more prominent role in personal branding. From another perspective, visibility is to be attained in two areas: First, on-field in the original field of practice and profession of the branded individual, aiming for instance for awards and honors conferred by peers in the field, and second, off-field outside of the professional field in the sense of building a mainstream media persona (Parmentier and Fischer, 2012 ). The interrelations of these different areas as well as constant connectivity with an increasing number of online opportunities suggests a need to bundle individual visibility activities in a transmedia model of storytelling and story-world construction. Stories that build brand meaning have transitioned from being developed by the original brand owner, i.e., storytelling, to being developed by the stakeholders, i.e., storygiving. The integration of different story elements that are dispersed across multiple media platforms in an episodic format and co-creative audience interaction are key characteristics (Elwell, 2014 ).

Narrative Identity

Contemporary ways of visibility and the digital world in particular call for a new paradigm to conceptualize the dialectic of the digital-analog self-identity. The self is much more actively managed, jointly constructed, interactive, openly disinhibited, confessional, multiply manifest, and influenced by what the branded individual and his or her avatars do online (Belk, 2013 ). Much of the influence on contemporary self-concepts and people's activities in creating them, is absent when only the self is studied offline in an extended way. It is not an either-or between offline and online identities, but an “as well” because “it becomes impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends as the two are seamlessly integrated. Online and off-line identities are not functionally equivalent to one another such that one is interchangeable for the other. Rather, together they co-create the experience of identity in the space between the digital and the analog” (Elwell, 2014 , p. 235). The transmedia model (Elwell, 2014 ) serves as a helpful paradigm for understanding the nature of self-identity and self-formation in this new liminal space by offering the conceptual architecture necessary for exploring and articulating its integrated, dispersed, episodic, and interactive narrative character as a key element of the contemporary human brand. Integrated narrative elements, such literal series of episodes in the form of sequential films, books, and games create a continuous and evolving story of the self. In this respect, the psychological perspective contributes valuably to a deeper understanding of personal branding by defining the story a a selective reconstruction of the autobiographical past and a narrative anticipation of the imagined future that serves to explain, for the self and others, how the person came to be and where his or her life may be going (McAdams, 2011 ). Developing one's own human brand implies that the I becomes an author, seeking to fashion the Me into a self-defining story. Consequently, narrative identity is not just an internalized and evolving story of the self that provides a person's life with some semblance of unity, purpose, and meaning. Rather, narrative identity, then, is that feature of human selfhood that begins to emerge when the adolescent or young-adult I assumes the guise of a storyteller.

Social Media

Social media in particular are assumed to allow human brands to develop stronger bonds with consumers, resulting in “a formation of a social relations exchange” (Chen, 2013 , p. 335) and a network of relationships in a general sense, as increased attention is a conditional element for brand attachment. In current digital knowledge industries, self-branding directly contributes to socialized value production through the social construction of a branded persona—a process called “digital work” (Gandini, 2016 ). In addition, specific consumer-brand relationships are built, for example in sports, where the athlete brand “has a positive influence on the extent to which consumers feel an emotional attachment to the athlete” (Carlson and Donavan, 2013 , p. 204). Human brands to which people are attached offer potential as endorsers, which has been the primary focus when exploring athletes and celebrities as human brands. While autonomy, relatedness, and competence have been seen to serve as antecedents of the strength of people's attachment to human brands (Thomson, 2006 ), Loroz and Braig ( 2015 ) create an empirically more comprehensive and sophisticated picture of consumer attachments to human brands that emphasizes the dimension of competence.

Co-brands and Stakeholders

As human brands do not function in isolation, the collaborative process at work in building the human brand is obvious. Brand meaning transfer effects and co-creation are inevitable elements that are generally considered, be it between businesspeople or politicians and their organizations, athletes “fraternizing with figures from the entertainment world” (Parmentier and Fischer, 2012 , p. 116), photographers and agencies and fashion models, or between employees and companies. Based on Freeman's ( 1984 ) stakeholder theory and the multi-stakeholder approach (Keller, 2003 ), stakeholder models of human brand equity are being developed for the art market, for CEO branding, and for professional rock climbers. First studies indicate beneficial as well as damaging co-branding activities in personal branding (e.g., Parmentier and Fischer, 2012 ) and a potential risk of broken links between human brands and organizational brands (e.g., Speed et al., 2015 ).

Brand Equity

After all efforts and investment into creating a human brand, it is crucial to measure whether personal branding activities are successful at all and, if so, to what extent they are. Certainly, the price of artworks, record sales or online downloads of a musician's work, career earnings, or the number of endorsement contracts as well as rankings in the annual Forbes's list of celebrities are measurable quantities, but they do not offer reliable information about the comparative human brand equity of different individuals. Professional equity that is built in the original field of practice and celebrity equity that is earned outside the original field are two main elements of human brand equity for football players (Parmentier and Fischer, 2012 ). A measurement scale for CEO human brands should contain work standards, style, leadership, personality, values, character, and teamwork (Chen and Chung, 2016 ) and CEO brand's characteristics and action parameters influence stakeholder's perceptions and behavior and may lead to the creation of added perceived value at reputational and financial level that reflects the actual essence of CEO brand equity (Cottan-Nir, 2019 ). Nonetheless, a real brand equity measurement in practice, considering all human brands as multidimensional constructs and taking into account the multi-stakeholder approach to co-create the human brands in a collective act, is still sorely lacking.

Challenges for Personal Branding

By contrast to the rational or even enthusiastic contemplation of the consequences of personal branding, scholars (e.g., Lair et al., 2005 ; Gershon, 2014 ) are increasingly sensitive toward its dark side as well and have revealed its essential challenges.

“The more personal branding, the better the impact” does not necessarily work as expected either, as too successful a human brand may appear as a threat to colleagues or superiors in a corporate setting, resulting in suspicion and skepticism (Harris and Rae, 2011 ). Based on the optimal stimulation level (OSL) theory, consumers may switch quickly to other human brands due to their desire for variety. Too frequent encounters with a human brand may also cost stimulatory potential and may result in a perception of boredom (Huang et al., 2015 ). In same vein, a higher level of visibility increases the probability of getting involved in affairs compared to ordinary people and, especially with regard to online personal branding, professional and career advantages cannot be taken for granted. Inappropriate photos or information posted on a candidate's page, poor communication skills, “bad-mouthing” from former employers or fellow employees, implied links to criminal behavior, or confidential information about past employers are top areas of concern when seeking for job opportunities (Harris and Rae, 2011 ).

Scholars only sporadically point out the fundamental, gender-specific differences in the context of work and career in their investigations of personal branding. In this respect, the contemporary phenomenon of personal branding and all its advocates face the challenge of developing strategies to address two key issues. First, the common task in personal branding of combining one's own authenticity with the need to take on multiple roles shows significant differences between women and men in the way they cope with it. Women are expected to reach for the top, but also to look feminine, pay attention to their appearance, be there for their children and husbands and routinely take on the role of caretaker at work. Consequently, working women with families run the risk of experiencing even greater tension between work and family if they commit to becoming a human brand (Lair et al., 2005 ). In the sense of “true-to-self” strategies, women can maintain their authenticity as individuals yet still achieve the desired rewards if they are good enough (Fletcher, 1999 ; Singh et al., 2002 ). Really successful, however, are chameleons (usually males) who pick strategies out of a number of role models by trying different approaches, with a greater chance of understanding what worked for them (Singh et al., 2002 ). Additionally, it is not acceptable and is risky for future career progression to promote a “whole” identity in some organizations (Sheppard, 1989 ). Only a work-focused person receives the ticket for the next round. This limitation raises the question for women with children that energy must be spent on positioning themselves to fit into a model that they still consider “different.” Second, women are less likely to self-promote than men (Dobbins et al., 1990 ; Oakley, 2000 ; Singh et al., 2002 ). This gender gap in self-promotion is reflective of the gender gap in self-evaluations and, in addition, the gender gap in self-evaluations is specific to evaluations of own performance (Exley and Kessler, 2019 ). Women evaluate their performance less favorably than men, which then is likely to have a continuing impact on their careers. In contrast, men are actively reading the promotion systems in their organization and working to fit the career success model using impression management. Most of the managerial and professional males seem to understand and comply with the rules of the game of acknowledgment, recognition and promotion in a more straightforward and less emotional way compared to their female colleagues. Although many women are aware of the potential of impression management, self-expression and networking, they decide not to use it (Singh et al., 2002 ).

Authenticity represents a crucial ingredient for human brands as it affects attitudes toward branded individuals positively, which in turn is a critical component used in consumer judgments and decision-making (Mills et al., 2015 ). The understanding of what authenticity of a human brand means exactly is predominantly 2-fold. On the one hand, it is understood as the “fit between persona and underlying personality” (Speed et al., 2015 ) and to act “according to his/her true self” (Moulard et al., 2015 ). In this way, authenticity is thought to be derived from intrinsic motivation as opposed to extrinsic motivation, with commercially driven interests which implies that commercialization must not be part of intrinsic motivation. Against this background, Paris Hilton, for example, is perceived as hardly authentic, but she is without doubt a celebrity brand (Moulard et al., 2015 ). Is authenticity then indeed indispensable in personal branding? On the other hand, the focus lies on being “unconventional and […] seen to be going against the mainstream” (Lunardo et al., 2015 ). Here, clarity as well as rarity contribute to authenticity and are closely linked to differentiation as a further key element of personal branding. However, distinction does not necessarily have to have positive connotations. Even negative “bad boy” or “bad girl” images (Carlson and Donavan, 2013 ), the refusal to comply with society's conventions, or even scandals may lead to differentiation. How to separate then between “good authenticity” and “bad authenticity,” and how far does a human brand benefit from it?

Obviously, a dilemma for personal branding arises from its tendency to demand both maintaining the true self, i.e., authenticity, and responding to different target groups, even more when it comes to creating a digital footprint that implies multiple online identities. In branding the self, people often have trouble crafting their individual web presence across various platforms when fashioning a coherent branded self (Gershon, 2014 ). Social psychologist Gergen ( 1991 ) and other postmodernists have argued that multiple selves are an adaptive response to a world of multiple demands. The multiplicity of roles is ascribed to represent a major psychological challenge today as people are expected to enact different identities to fit in different contexts (Leary and Tangney, 2012 ), which is in line with scholars' perspective on personal branding, especially considering human brands' presence on social media: “They struggle to seem like a coherent self across multiple platforms, despite the complexities of audiences for the different interfaces they use” (Gershon, 2014 , p. 29). In fact, scholars indicate successful examples of human brands consisting of different roles offline as well as online, such as David Beckham and David Bowie. Beckham's human brand, for example, encompasses several masculinities, including the romantic and compassionate husband, the hands-on father, the football legend and the fashion icon. He has become what his fans wish to see in him, which suggests that an important component of his popularity and success derives from these multiple identities (Cashmore and Parker, 2003 ; Vincent et al., 2009 ; Cocker et al., 2015 ). The human brand of late celebrity David Bowie consisted of three components, i.e., the real person (David Jones), the performance persona (David Bowie) and the characters derived from this persona, such as Ziggy Stardust (Lindridge and Eagar, 2015 ). Despite a few successful examples in the celebrity sector, there remains the question of the effects when having multiple discrepant identities for the infinite number of human brands. Psychologists found that, despite their buffering effects in stressful events (Linville, 1987 ), a greater variability across identities was associated with lower well-being (Donahue et al., 1993 ), a lack of coherence and integrity (Ryan et al., 2005 ), and inauthenticity (Sheldon et al., 1997 ). Self-determination theory could serve as a helpful framework as “under conditions in which the identities offered individuals are both supported by significant others and allow fulfillment of the psychological needs for relatedness, competence, and autonomy, a healthy integration of the individual is possible” (Leary and Tangney, 2012 , p. 242).

Despite the creation of few personal branding frameworks, partly based on empirical studies (e.g., Preece and Kerrigan, 2015 ) and partly as a result of conceptual work (e.g., Bendisch et al., 2013 ), a comprehensive personal branding framework or even theory has not yet been developed in the academic field. Even in a well-defined field such as commercial sports, a general model for personal branding is not effective, as “wrestlers or boxers might be seen as rude athletes, while golfers might be seen as sophisticated ones” (Lunardo et al., 2015 , p. 706). Nonetheless, the empirically based artistic brand model constructed as a diffusion process over time (Preece and Kerrigan, 2015 ) may serve as an inspiring example. Broken down to the individual level, an infinite number of different human brands is possible, with each having its own human complexity. In addition, the more people have acquired a status symbol as a human brand, the less distinctive it is and the less status it confers on its holders. Simply said, “even if it were possible that we could all be famous, if everyone were famous, then no one would be famous” (Holmes and Redmond, 2006 , p. 14).

As personal branding represents the logical extension of previous forms of branding, such as product brands, service brands, corporate brands, or retail brands, it would seem natural to call for an application of traditional branding practices in equal measure to the younger field of personal branding. As a matter of fact, this transfer has few clear advocates (e.g., Close et al., 2011 ; Ternès et al., 2014 ) or critics (e.g., Russell and Schau, 2010 ; Preece and Kerrigan, 2015 ), but it promises constructive approaches (e.g., Parmentier and Fischer, 2012 ; Preece and Kerrigan, 2015 ) that very selectively adapt proven branding practices. So far, no one attribute from traditional branding can be identified that has explicitly been rejected from personal branding. Others, such as the brand personality (Aaker, 1997 ), competition which implies points of differentiation as well as points of parity (Keller et al., 2002 ), brand visibility (Keller, 2013 ), brand relationships (Fournier, 1998 ), or brand meaning transfer (McCracken, 1989 ) as well as brand co-creation (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2000 ) have already been adapted to the context of personal branding as discussed earlier, defining them as single key ingredients. Nonetheless, personal branding is not investigated as an entire process to clarify how it emerges and even though a “great brand is not built by accident” (Keller, 2013 , p. 125), it remains unclear how aware people really are about their own human brand and their brand building process. Furthermore, target groups and categories represent two indispensable dimensions in traditional branding (Keller, 2013 ). However, abstract terms such as “customer” (Gehl, 2011 ), “consumer” (Carlson and Donavan, 2013 ), and “audience” (Mills et al., 2015 ) are widely applied in personal branding but it remains nebulous as to who is meant by this. Similarly, the term “target market” serves as an undefined focus for numerous activities in human brand positioning (Shepherd, 2005 ), except for the art market (Schroeder, 2005 ), the music market (Lindridge and Eagar, 2015 ) and the job market (Zamudio et al., 2013 ). Finally, the dimension of time suggests that “if there is one rule for modern branding, however, it is that brands can never stand still” (Keller, 2013 , p. 479). One should understand that “achieving and maintaining your personal brand is a journey, not a destination” (Trepanier and Gooch, 2014 , p. 57). Human brands are not static and face continuous change during their lifetimes. Athletes may experience unexpected injuries or performance slumps (Arai et al., 2014 ), models have biological limits affecting their ability to keep their physical appearance (Parmentier et al., 2013 ), transgressions can damage human brands (Moulard et al., 2015 ) and, finally, every branded individual will pass away (Fillis, 2015 ). There are first insights into viable means to extend the life expectancy of a human brand, as can be seen in David Beckham maintaining human brand equity even after his active career in football had ended (Parmentier and Fischer, 2012 ). Similarly, the artistic brand model has been considered in terms of a diffusion process over time (Preece and Kerrigan, 2015 ). However, the research domains of traditional branding (Kapferer, 2012 ; Keller, 2013 ) as well as personal branding (Philbrick and Cleveland, 2015 ) show clear agreement about brands having to be managed over time. But, in contrast to traditional branding again, the issue of longevity faces a lack of clarity too in the sense of how to handle it in personal branding.

Conclusions

Fundamentally, personal branding has long outgrown its original academic role as another instance of “broadening the concept of marketing” (Kotler and Levy, 1969 ). Instead, it is worth appreciating personal branding as a distinct and interdisciplinary expression of branding and not just as a simple variation thereof. However, before giving a positive answer to the key question of whether science can “reclaim self-marketing and personal branding from the enthusiasts” (Shepherd, 2005 , p. 12), further academic efforts are needed. Beside empirical studies, different formats such as review papers (Gorbatov et al., 2018 ) not only offer valuable contributions in this regard, but they also serve as a means to incite the required sophisticated debate on the contemporary phenomenon of human brands and their emergence.

Universally valid personal branding frameworks or even theories cannot be identified yet, and those that have been put forward do not show great promise due to their fragmented nature. Therefore, this review suggests updated definitions to better structure the fragmented approaches toward the process of personal branding and to the human brand as a thing, as proposed above. Celebrities serve as the cradle of the personal branding movement as well as for all kind of human brands ( Figure 3 ). Apart from the “celebrity,” two additional classes of human brands, i.e., the “icon” and the “personal brand,” as well as two intermediate classes, i.e., the “superstar” between celebrities and icons and the “micro-celebrity” between celebrities and personal brands, complement the aspect of classes.

Nonetheless, personal branding happens in many and diverse shapes and forms and takes place in a distinctly complex setting, so a precise and readily transferable recipe for personal branding that is applicable to every walk of life has to remain wishful thinking. Any search for the one universal personal branding theory would seem doomed from the outset. In addition, since proposing a model implies pragmatism, structure, and universality, personal branding faces a paradox in that a generalizable branding model has to be applied to something that is completely unique, namely human beings. Therefore, more empirical evidence, exploration, and conceptual development are sorely needed, as they may result in class and category-specific definitions as well as models. In particular, the icon as a human brand class, celebrity academics, or the aristocracy call for deeper investigation, while social media influencers, e.g., Bhad Bhabie, as the new type of endorsers and “celefictions” (Nayar, 2009 ; Kerrigan et al., 2011 ), such as Harry Potter, Lara Croft or Dr Z, must not be neglected.

Gender differences in personal branding, whether in the branded individual itself or on the consumer side, have so far only been examined sporadically and rather one-sidedly with regard to the effect of human brands' gendering in social media (e.g., Duffy and Pruchniewska, 2017 ; Draper and McDonnell, 2018 ). But the open questions are far more fundamental and very diverse, for example with regard to the world of work. What explains the existence of the gender gap in self-evaluations which affects the gender gap in self-promotion? How can the gender gap in self-evaluations be mitigated? how does the potential for gender-specific backlash influence self-evaluations and how employers view self-evaluations? (Exley and Kessler, 2019 ). Future research should also consider the gender-oriented role of personal branding in private life. Sexual selection theory, for instance, can help to understand how people act in an effort to attract another person (Schmitt and Buss, 1996 ) and psychological mechanisms, to suggest further possibilities, appear to underlie between-sex differences in what people prefer in mates (Buss, 1989 ) and how they attract mates (Buss, 1988 ).

Especially since, looking beyond the snapshot, the sustainability of human brands still suffers from a lack of attention, research questions such as “How do top managers' human brands emerge over time?” demand an answer based on empirical studies. From an academic vantage point, this more comprehensive understanding of personal branding also needs to expand from the synchronic to the diachronic level, that is, the human brand's fate over time in the sense of developing a lifecycle approach and identifying ways to ensure the longevity of a brand. The same applies as well to further branding attributes promising useful applicability to personal branding such as target groups, competition, visibility, or human brand authenticity or, finally, human brand equity measurement.

As human brands cannot function in isolation, brand leveraging processes between human brands and their organizational environment and stakeholders need to be investigated further. How do human brands develop an interactive, individualized, yet communal brand experience at all brand touch points for all stakeholders, considering that not all stakeholders are actively involved?

All in all, it is obvious that personal branding is an interdisciplinary domain where research into branding-oriented explanatory and development approaches is given considerable, if not too much, emphasis. Although some scholars already refer to psychological models and theories in their research, we advocate for much more attention to be paid to the components “personal” and “human” in personal branding and human brand. The concept of narrative identity, for instance, plays a major role today in the multi-layer personality theory developed by McAdams and Pals ( 2006 ) which corresponds to today's “flexible personality” the modalities of selfhood have shifted to from a preoccupation with “character” in the19th century to “personality” in the 20th (Hearn, 2008 ). Additionally, the concept of narrative identity serves as a framework to understand how human beings make narrative sense out of their own lives, how they develop the stories that come to comprise their very identities, how those stories change over time, and how those stories function—psychologically, socially, morally, culturally—as the storyteller journeys across the long course of adult life (McAdams, 2011 ). In turn, personal brands have so far been presented primarily as a static construct, which must be overcome in the future through a life-span approach. The method of process research, which has proven itself in organizational research, is just as obvious in its application as models and concepts from psychology. Erikson's ( 1980 ) model of identity development, for instance, provides different life stages each with its own central identity tasks that can contribute to the emergence of a human brand over time. Especially for the further challenges that personal branding faces, applied psychology offers numerous options for a deeper exploration of this contemporary phenomenon. A review from a psychological perspective, for instance, examining the literature on the context in which the concept of self-branding developed, the experience of presenting self-brands to a public audience, and the psychological construction of authenticity within the self-branding discourse, would certainly contribute significantly to the state of knowledge on personal branding.

This review provides an overview of the contemporary phenomenon of personal branding from the angle of academic publications. As it certainly cannot avoid certain shortcomings, a deeper and even more systematic literature research is recommended, which, for example, implies specific inclusion as well as exclusion criteria (Ramírez et al., 2017 ), such as the classification of journals or a more recent timeslot for the articles' publication.

In the end, personal branding remains a field deserving to be scholarly explored and an academic impulse for rethinking branding, as it may sensitize scholars in applied psychology to the concept of more collaboration with practitioners and with other academic domains, e.g., culture theory, management education, organizational studies, or vocational behavior, in the interest of knowledge dissemination and mutual enrichment.

Data Availability Statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author/s.

Author Contributions

SS is the main author of the submitted paper. JH initiated this manuscript and co-developed key visuals. CG contributed to the methodology and the positioning. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Funding. University of Twente funds the open access publication fee. Further funding sources do not exist.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01809/full#supplementary-material

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