مدلسازی عوامل مؤثر بر برند شخصی بانوان ورزشکار نخبه ایرانی

Introduction
Nowadays in the sports industry, brand managers and agents are often responsible for managing athletes’ brands and helping them create opportunities to develop their brands and increase their fan base. In this way, managers, agents, and sports marketing companies need to provide effective ways to help athletes create and develop their personal brands. On the other hand, athletes should strive to develop relationships with fans and create a strong personal brand through effective strategies and better management. Brand, branding, and brand management are not new concepts in sports management, but the concept of athlete branding and female athlete branding is a new area that has recently drawn researchers’ attention. In recent years, with the emergence of social networks, the need for branding and its development in women’s sports has also arisen. Female athletes are no longer just symbols of accepted social roles such as mothers and daughters (Sherifler et al., 2016). Additionally, in recent years, while professional female athletes are creating their own sports brands, they are also increasing their fan base for themselves and their teams. The review of literature in the field of marketing and particularly branding in sports shows that developing a plan and strategy for branding professional athletes is essential because it increases fans’ attachment to their favorite athletes. Famous companies also aim to sell more of their sports and non-sports products by supporting professional athletes. In fact, in today’s highly competitive sports industry, athlete branding has become a fundamental task for both athletes and sports organizations. Based on these issues, sports managers and marketers should provide suitable strategies to promote the comprehensive personal brand of Iranian elite female athletes and not focus solely on outcome-oriented professional sports, in order to create professional athlete branding.
Method
This is an applied study in terms of objective, descriptive-analytical in terms of method, and sequential exploratory mixed-methods (qualitative and quantitative) in terms of execution method. Data were collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews. The interview process continued until theoretical saturation was reached, and in the qualitative section, 17 interviews were conducted with experts, including female athletes from all Olympic periods, Asian Games, and experts who had clear records in the field of professional women’s sports and branding. The statistical population in the quantitative section consisted of female athletes. To determine the sample size in the quantitative study for the purpose of testing the theoretical model, a sample size estimation method based on the quantitative analysis method, which is known as the Muller's thumb rule, was used in the qualitative section. The sample size was considered to be 490 persons and the convenience sampling method was used. The face validity and content validity of the questionnaire were confirmed by 8 sports management professors, and the Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.88, indicating high reliability of the questionnaire. Path-structural modeling was used to test the research model, and the PLS software was used to assess the fit of the path-structural model in terms of reliability, internal consistency, convergent validity, and discriminant validity.
Findings
The results showed that the theoretical model of the personal brand of elite female athletes has a good fit. Among them, the effectiveness of intervention factors (β = 0.686) in effective strategies for enhancing the personal brand of elite female athletes was higher than the effectiveness of environmental factors (β = 0.157) and personal factors (β = 0.207), indicating that enhancing the personal brand of female athletes is more related to intervention factors rather than environmental and personal factors.
Conclusion
Based on the results, it can be stated that personal branding of elite female athletes is influenced by complex factors and conditions. Perhaps this is due to the fact that women’s sports in the country are overshadowed by men’s sports, which in turn leads to cultural and social problems such as the modeling of deviant individuals, daily life busy schedule, lack of sponsorship in the women’s sector, attention to non-sports personal brands, and the existence of a sports mafia. It is worth mentioning that in comparing the effectiveness of personal and environmental factors, the effectiveness of personal factors is significantly higher than that of environmental factors, indicating that the phenomenon under study is more influenced by personal and situational factors than by the environment. Therefore, athletes, sports managers, and marketers can create a market of customers and fans, earn sustainable income, and maintain their reputation, popularity, and self-esteem by paying more attention to these factors.
Keywords: Branding, Female Athletes, Elite Athlete, Personal brand
JEL Classification: M31, L83, J16, M37