| dc.description.abstract | Purpose: Social networking sites have attained significant popularity recently and allow individuals the opportunity to network, connect and share all over the world. Social Networking Sites (SNSs) have become a social activity that people across the world use daily. The purpose of this study is to investigate how researchers brand themselves on academic networking sites, specifically on ResearchGate (RG) to become visible through their individual brands and also the influence this concept “social network brand visibility” (SNBV) has on academic professionals or researchers on the internet. SNBV is a new concept and to the best of our knowledge there is little or no research on the SNBV application in academic personal branding and this motivated the conduction of a research on this topic.
Design/methodology/approach: The research method is quantitative by means of collecting primary data to develop and estimate statistical analysis. Online survey was the approach used in conducting this research. SPSS AMOS software was used to analyse the results. A total number of 205 responses were collected from institutions/university/research departments in 36 different countries.
Findings: The empirical findings show that SNBV has a positive influence on reputation, trust, personal brand equity and academic or research performance. Additionally, habitual or frequent usage of social network site, RG influences SNBV positively. It also was found that there is mediation or an indirect relationship between Social Network Brand Visibility (SNBV) and personal brand equity because the effect of SNBV in achieving personal brand equity is through academic and research performance.
Research limitation: The main limitation of this study is that the results are based on only 205 respondents and hence the findings cannot be generalized.
Practical implication: The findings of this study can be used by researchers or professionals in academia to attain personal brand equity, reputation and trust through the concept social network brand visibility (SNBV). This study can also be used by celebrities and politicians in terms of application of social network brand visibility in personal branding.
Keywords: Social network brand visibility (SNBV), social media, personal branding, academic social network sites (ASNS), ResearchGate (RG), peer-to-peer, researchers, professionals, academic. | |