Services Marketing Quarterly

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Physicians’ Brand Personality: Building Brand

Personality Scale

Reza Shafiee, Fahimeh Ansari & Hossein Mahjob

To cite this article: Reza Shafiee, Fahimeh Ansari & Hossein Mahjob (2022) Physicians’ Brand
Personality: Building Brand Personality Scale, Services Marketing Quarterly, 43:1, 48-66, DOI:
10.1080/15332969.2021.1989890

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15332969.2021.1989890

Published online: 25 Oct 2021.

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Services Marketing Quarterly
2022, VOL. 43, NO. 1, 48–66
https://doi.org/10.1080/15332969.2021.1989890

Physicians’ Brand Personality: Building Brand

Personality Scale
Reza Shafieea , Fahimeh Ansarib and Hossein Mahjobc
a
PhD of Business Management, Faculty of Management and Economics, Islamic Azad University
Science and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran; bBusiness and Management, Islamic Azad University,
Tehran, Iran; cManagement, Tarbiat Modares University (TMU), Tehran, Iran;

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Both healthcare industry marketers and physicians have been Brand personality;
paying more attention to the growth and potential competition physicians;
in the healthcare market. This research developed a theoretical human brand;
model for physician brand personality (PBP), which is intended healthcare service
to present applicable traits that professional physicians could
consider for increasing their brand personality associations.
This scale was developed through the use of some listing and
item reduction techniques in combination with the explanatory
and confirmatory factor analysis procedures. The findings
extend previous research on human brand and brand person-
alities of physicians and suggest that patients view physician
as a human brand with a unique brand personality.

Introduction
Brand personality associations are activated in consumer memory and affect
consumer behaviors, it shapes attitudes toward the human brand (Berry &
Bendapudi, 2007). Brand personality affects brand preferences (Kim, 2000),
brand attachment (Sung & Tinkham 2005), brand trust (Berry & Bendapudi,
2007), and brand loyalty (Brakus et al., 2009). The concept of brand per-
sonality is a component of consumer perception about products or services
and those perceptions can actuate the consumer to a special brand (Keller,
1993). Brand personality can be traced back to its origins through the theory
of symbolism, Consumers often assign various and unique personalities to
brands (Carlson & Donavan, 2013). It is argued that consumers view their
preferred service providers similar to themselves, so their purchasing behav-
ior is motivated by the symbolic value of the healthcare service providers
(Brown et al., 2002). Consumption of branded products allows consumers
to express their own self (Belk, 1988), through associating oneself with the
particular attributes and personality of the brand (Sirgy et al., 2008).

CONTACT Reza Shafiee r.shafiei@srbiau.ac.ir PhD of Business Management, Faculty of Management

and Economics, Islamic Azad University Science and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran.
© 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
 Services Marketing Quarterly 49

The unique human personality of physicians has a great impact on brand-

related traits as a symbolic value.It has innumerable advantages that may
lead to brands with strong brand personalities(Aaker, 1999; Keller, 1993),
and allows consumers to express their own personalities (Aaker, 1997). Sirgy
et al. (2008) introduced the self-concept theory that explains why consumers
are motivated to choose certain services due to their symbolic value so
consumers can append their self-consistency and self-esteem through service
encounter (Parmentier et al., 2013). This study concentrates on similarity
between the personality traits of physicians and patients and what is per-
ceived in communication in service encounters. In the latter, consumers
assimilate themselves with the brand (Yuksel & Sameer, 2006) and the same
can be seen in patients looking to assimilate their personality with the
chosen physician. Brand personality affects people’s emotions; physicians
can transmit some acceptable personality traits in interaction with the market
and influence the perceptions and emotions of the target market customers
(Carlson et al., 2009). Hence, when the customers feel more satisfied emo-
tionally, they promote the physicians’ brand through WOM recommendations
to other people (Venable et al., 2005).
Healthcare is an immensely costly and highly complex service that
significantly affects economies and the quality of daily living. Healthcare
costs have become a major burden for people, threatening the global
competitiveness and even the survival of some companies. Healthcare costs
in the budget of Iranian families are approximately 24 percent for one
year (2015), so healthcare services have become a major burden for fam-
ilies in Iran (I.N.I.H.R., 2015) the majority of the patients (31.2%) directly
went to specialists as the first point of treatment. This is against findings
from more developed country like Western European countries which
demonstrates that most patients (about 75–85%) during a year demand
more primary rather than specialized care (I.N.I.H.R., 2015). Patients in
Iran prefer to refer to specialist or some famous general physicians at any
time and any stage, either because of trust in their skills, knowledge, or
brand authenticity (Lankarani et al., 2015). Although it is known as a
major source of cost escalation in health systems and may even result in
the promotion of providing unnecessary care, this makes a financial oppor-
tunity for increasing physicians’ income (Davari et al., 2012). The increase
in healthcare expenditures is an evident and common phenomenon world-
wide, which is mostly due to the improvements in medical sciences and
technology and the rate of population increase; So in this situation, some
invisible assets like brand personality (Brown et al., 2002) of physicians
are able to help customers to choose the most relevant physician without
needing to pay money repeatedly (Daneshkohan et al., 2011) to test various
physicians and lose their time, money and other losses which they may face.
50 R. SHAFIEE ET AL.

Physicians try to introduce their professional capabilities and premier traits

to the consumers as a professional human brand (Wee, 2004; Carlson
et al., 2008). Physicians are well aware that, unlike many years ago, clients
seek to gain knowledge and familiarity about experiences, skills, and pro-
fessional brand personality of the service-provider before proceeding with
the treatment (Hendrix et al., 2009). That is why physicians seek to build
effective, long-term relationships with their consumers in their competitive
market environment to earn more benefit from the potential market.
Consumers also want long-term relationship with physicians whose services
they are familiar with and feel satisfied about, and they prefer to avoid
constantly changing their service providers (Frank, 2007) and remain loyal
to a specific physician brand because switching has different costs for
consumers such as cost of time lost, financial cost, emotional cost, risk
of getting help from a new physician, and another therapeutic route
(Harrison et al., 2012; Maehle & Supphellen, 2008). This study tries to
adopt the perspective of the physician as a human brand that possesses
unique brand personalities. Brand personality traits will directly influence
perceptions of consumers (Aaker, 1997) hereby physician brand personality
scale that are presented can exert powerful effects on prestige and dis-
tinctiveness of a professional physician (Thomson, 2006).

Service brand

Researchers previously believed that general principles of brand management

in case of goods and services are very similar and used models to create
brands for goods in case of services (Berry & Seltman, 2007). However,
identifying the unique attributes of services gradually resulted in provision
of exclusive branding models for services with relatively different compo-
nents (Carlson & Donavan, 2013). Studies have been conducted about
service branding in various service market such as finances, transportation,
tourism, and education, but there are few studies in healthcare branding
(Keller & Lehmann, 2006). Accelerating the role of service brand on deci-
sion-making process is undeniable and it guarantees a specific level of
quality for clients and increases their brand trust about intangible, received
services (Berry, 2000). Brands provide intangible values to potential con-
sumers and cause a decrease in financial, social and safety risks when
customers use medical services (Moulard et al., 2015).

Nature of healthcare services

Services are classified by the amount of tangibility in service encounter

points (Zeithaml et al., 1993), Professional healthcare is categorized at
 Services Marketing Quarterly 51

the highest level of intangibility (De Chernatony & Riley, 1998). This
means that healthcare services need attendance where the service encoun-
ter occurs. According to this classification, healthcare services need a
high level of direct or in direct continuous interaction between customers
and service providers (Close et al., 2011). Parasuraman et al. (1988)
proposed five dimensions including tangibility, reliability, responsiveness,
assurance, and empathy as a base to build a tool to measure service
quality. Among these variables, except for physical assets, other dimen-
sions have a direct relationship with the service-provider behavior (Louis
& Lombart, 2010; Zeithaml et al., 1993). Consumers pay attention to
traits which physicians present during service encounter and in interac-
tion with their customers in order to create their own brand personality
(Lovelock & Wright, 2002). The concept of physician brand personality
starts with the customer’s tendency to professional attributes and prom-
inent traits of physicians in the service encounter process (Grace &
O’Cass, 2005); when the relationship continues, personal traits of the
physician forms in the mind of the patient as a brand personality (Loroz
& Braig, 2015).

Healthcare branding

A brand can be seen as a value proposition that promises to satisfy par-

ticular customer needs and wants (Keller, 2009). A strong brand shifts the
competitive framework in the health center favor, giving it intangible value
that is difficult to replicate (Herbst & Merz, 2011). Healthcare branding
literatures have defined branding in terms of unique meaning for con-
sumers, and such meaning and personal healthcare service experience(Lee
et al., 2000) with a brand can create an emotional connection and rela-
tionship between the customer and healthcare brand (Kennedy et al.,
2011). Parallel to the Increasing competition in healthcare sector, marketing
specialists are looking for new and effective methods of engaging con-
sumers by using experiential marketing strategies in order to get more
income (Bobocea et al., 2016). In such situation, brand work as a profound
communication tool in market (Gray, 2006) that creates mental represen-
tation in the consumer’s mindset and enhances physician brand personality
trust (Grohmann, 2009). Healthcare is an intimate service, so experiences
and emotions play an integral role in healthcare decision making (Berry
& Seltman, 2007). Brands make a unique meaning to customers (Keller,
2009); such meaning and personal experience can create an emotional
relationship between the consumer and the human brand personality of
physician (Moulard et al., 2015).
52 R. SHAFIEE ET AL.

Brand personality

In mature markets, some non-related attributes of brand have great effects

on consumers’ decision making (Azoulay & Kapferer, 2003). In this envi-
ronment, brand personality can raise preferences of costumers as effective
(Avis, 2012), non-related attributes (Berry & Bendapudi, 2007) to accept
the special brand. Brand personality works as a special character which
can be conceptualized and defined as a human characteristics associated
with a brand (Aaker, 1997; Plummer, 1985). Researchers have claimed that
brand personality is an important subject of study because it can help to
differentiate brands(Freling et al., 2011), develop the emotional feature of
a brand(O’Conner & Shewchuk, 1995) and increase the personal meaning
of a brand to the consumer and confirms a stable brand image over time
(Fournier, 1998). Individuals infer a brand personality based on all the
information that they take from their direct and indirect relation with the
brand (Loroz & Braig, 2015). Brand personality is considered as an intan-
gible asset among symbolic features of a brand (Geuens et al., 2009) and
differentiates the brand from other competitors (Spielmann & Babin, 2011).
Aaker (1997) suggested that a brand personality often increases the con-
sumer’s connection with the brand. Understanding the similarity of the
consumer’s self-congruency with personality traits of physicians may cause
the increase of the consumer’s companionship (Moulard et al., 2015; Sirgy
et al., 2008). Carlson et al., 2009 explored relationships between the human
brand personality and the consumer service performances which they
received might influence consumer brand trust. Consumers encounter a
professional physician brand in order to get services and be involved in
recognition process of a brand that fits with their personal image (Sirgy
et al., 2008). Brand personality enables consumers to express their ideal
dimensions of themselves (Kleine et al., 1993; Parker, 2009), this is referred
as self-congruity or brand-self congruity (Helgeson & Supphellen, 2004;
Usakli & Baloglu, 2011). Consumers’ perceptions are created by finding
appropriateness between personality attributes of themselves and a special
brand (Fournier, 1998). Personality traits of a human brand provide sym-
bolic meaning (Parmentier et al., 2013) and it can create emotional pref-
erences for consumer to elect a professional physician brand. Emotional
preferences are more effective than functional characteristic values in
choosing a specific physician brand (Harris & Fleming, 2005). Previous
research in service brand personality or human brand didn’t focus or test
the factors that influence perception and authenticity of a physician, the
current paper fills a void in the knowledge base by examining what
antecedent factors influence the consumer’s perceptions of a physician’s
brand personality authenticity similar to a human brand (Helgeson &
Supphellen, 2004).
 Services Marketing Quarterly 53

Brand personality approaches

a. Narrative Approach, in this theory, a brand must present specific and

unique behaviors internationally and it is considered as a live creature
and consumers suppose an intrinsic personality for the brand (Batra et al.,
1993). This approach says that in advertisement, a brand is shown by
doing a job to narrate their brand personality, so they consider a brand
as a live character that has a personality (Aaker & Fournier, 1995). This
concept defines personality as the set of meanings constructed by an
observer to describe the "inner" characteristics of another person (Phau
& Cheen Lau, 2000); b. Relational approach, this approach tries to define
the concept of brand personality by using interpersonal relationships
(Fournier, 1998). Brand is presented as an active, dynamic and effective
partner in a mutual interaction that is realized between the client and
brand. Behaviors and behavioral inferences perceived about brand in this
interaction form a collection that in fact is the consumer’s perception
about brand personality (Aaker & Fournier, 1995). In addition, brand
personality in relational approach leads to determining how brand com-
municates with customers and how it affects the behaviors of them (Louis
& Lombart, 2010). In this research, brand personality has been investigated
according to the definition provided in relational approach. Relationship
plays an interactive role between a physician’s brand and consumers (Aaker
& Fournier, 1995). Traits that have the greatest effects on decision-making
of customers can act as an emotional and exciting symbol (Moulard et al.,
2015) and steer the route of professional relationship (Avis et al., 2012)
to receive services in a specific way toward physicians who have these traits.

Methodology
We used a multi-method study design to develop a brand personality scale
for physicians in healthcare market, like Aaker’s (1997) development of a
brand personality scale for consumer brands and industrial brand person-
ality (IBP) scale by Herbst and Merz (2011), this article tries to develop
a brand personality scale (BPS) for physicians. We chose twenty authentic
brand personality scale generation articles that were published in the most
credible marketing journals. Having gathering all items, we asked some
marketing experts to omit the semantic and conceptual duplicates that
existed (first study). In the next step, we invited marketing managers and
healthcare service marketers, who were professional in healthcare sector,
as well as medicine students, physicians, specialists and practitioners that
worked in hospitals, clinics and laboratories to answer our questions about
physician traits which are so determinant for building a powerful brand
personality. In this study (2) tried to reduce the quantatively generated
54 R. SHAFIEE ET AL.

item pool that was collected from previous scales. After these two studies,
we prepare the questionnaire to conduct exploratory (Study 3) and con-
firmatory (Study 4) factor analyses.

Content analysis

In the first study after collecting all the attributes in the 19 selected brand
personality models (Aaker et al., 2001; Bosnjak et al., 2007; Freling et al.,
2011; Geuens et al., 2009; Helgeson & Supphellen, 2004; Sung & Tinkham,
2005; Sweeney & Brandon, 2006; Venable et al., 2005) items of traits were
collected from all of these models. In the next step, after classifying the
traits, 34 traits were eliminated due to semantic similarity by the decision
of five marketing experts in business faculty. At the end of this phase, 72
unique personality traits were obtained from the selected scales for the
following process.

Item generation

This study is indebted to Churchill (1979) and Steenkamp and Van Trijp
(1991) in the development of the measurement scale. In the process of
developing question items, it is important to identify as many relevant
items as possible. We reviewed the hospital staff, medical students and
hospital patients, and we randomly selected 110 respondents and asked
them to fill our questioners. At the second study, we continued the survey
with practitioners in healthcare sector and ask them about the role of the
physician brand personality in health market customers. Overall, 94 prac-
titioners from diverse hospitals participated in the survey, resulting in a
response rate of 89% (average age was 48.7 years, and 58% were male).
We asked them to evaluate the stimuli’s professional brand personality
of physician on a six-point scale ranging from 1 (“is not descriptive”) to
6 (“is very descriptive”) along the 57 items. Qualifying questions ascer-
tained that the respondents were familiar with the randomly determined
personality of physician brand. To identify strong brand personality of
physician traits, we calculated the means for all 72 personality traits and
selected the mean score of four (4 = applies somewhat) as the cutoff value,
in line with prior researches. This procedure resulted in a more manage-
able and relevant amount of 29 personality traits (see Table 1).

Data collection

In the study (3), collected data "were taken" from patients who were served
in a number of hospitals in Tehran, Iran. Among 240 distributed
 Services Marketing Quarterly 55

Table 1. Item relevance means.

No Relative items Means No Relative items Means
1 Orderly 5.40 16 Assertive 4.32
2 Thoughtful 5.30 17 Up to Date 4.30
3 Reliable 5.10 18 Original 4.28
4 Consistent 5.0 19 Openness to Experience 4.26
5 Secure 4.90 20 truthful 4.23
6 Achievement Striving 4.84 21 Intimate 4.16
7 Intelligent 4.65 22 Sincere 4.14
8 Affectionate 4.63 23 Competent 4.14
9 Altruistic 4.58 24 Confident 4.11
10 Cheerful 4.57 25 Sophisticated 4.10
11 Comforting 4.55 26 Down to earth 4.07
12 Daring 4.54 27 Mature 4.05
13 Determined 4.52 28 Innovation 4.05
14 Efficient 4.47 29 Unassuming 4.03
15 Hard Working 4.39 30 - -

Table 2. Sample description.

Variable Values Frequency % Frequency
Gender Males 101 0.47
Females 115 0.53
Total 216 100
Age Less than 30 years 50 0.23
From 30 to less than 50 years 132 0.61
above 50 years 34 0.16
Total 216 100

questionnaires, 216 completed questionnaires were returned which is the

basis for the study. Items were derived from previous research literature
models for brand personality and pretest study, which determines 29 items
for physician brand personality. All items were measured using a five-point
Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The
questionnaire included the 29 items. Participants averaged 46.5 years of
age and 47% of the participants were male (Table 2).

Data analysis

To prove the measurement scale for physician brand personality, employed

exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).
There were two fundamental aims of the quantitative phase of the research:
(1) to examine the dimensions of physician brand personality in healthcare
sector. (2) To evaluate the reliability and validity of the items among
physician’s brand personality we researched in the quantitative phase in a
two-step method. This study calculates Cronbach’s α coefficient to assess
the reliability of each variable. It suggests that a reliability which reaches
over 0.7 is acceptable. Table 3 reports that the Cronbach’s α coefficients
of variables are between 0.79 ~ 0.92; therefore, they remain above 0.7
(Nunnally, 1978) and no measurement items are deleted at this stage.
56 R. SHAFIEE ET AL.

Table 3. Cronbach’s α coefficient of variables.

Construct Number of items Cronbach’s α
Conscientious 7 0.915
Compassionate 5 0.875
Spirited 5 0.875
Innovative 4 0.838
Wholehearted 4 0.868
Eligible 4 0.917
Total 29

Exploratory factor analysis

Then, we conducted a principal component analysis with varimax rota-

tion to extract items with eigenvalue over 1 and factor loading over 0.6
(Fornell & Larcker, 1981); those items with cross-loading below 0.5 are
deleted. Thus 4 items were deleted and 25 items finally remained. The
Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy is 0.927
(>0.5), and the Bartlett’s test of sphericity is 3281.854 (p=.000); both
values achieve significance level, so factor analysis can be used. EFA
extracted 6 factors with total items of 25 (see Table 4); each construct
is separately named as ‘Conscientious ‘‘Compassionate,’ ‘Spirited,’
‘Innovative,’ ‘Wholehearted,’ and ‘Eligible,’ with explained variances
respectively being 17.75%, 13.39%, 12.69%, 10.83%,10.09%, and 9.04%,
and the total explained variance is up to 74.18%. The factor loading of
Conscientious with 7 items is between 0.67 ~ 0.80, that of Compassionate
with 4 items between 0.73 ~ 0.83, that of Spirited with 5 items between
0.66 ~ 0.79, that of Innovative with 3 items between 0.72 ~ 0.82, that of
Wholehearted with 3 items between 0.79 ~ 0.81 and that of Eligible with
3 items between 0.82 ~ 0.87; any of the factor loadings is over 0.6
(Fornell & Larcker, 1981).

Confirmatory factor analysis and convergent validity

With regard to validity analysis, we use AMOS v23 to conduct CFA with
an attempt to assess fit of models and convergent validity of each con-
struct. CFA result is shown in Table 4. The scale model’s χ2/df= 1.639,
less than 3 (Hayduk, 1987); GFI and AGFI are 0.86 and 0.825 respectively,
already reaching the desirable level of0.8. NFI= 0.884, NNFI= 0.95, IFI=
0.96, and CFI= 0.951 are all above 0.9 (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988; Bentler &
Bonett, 1980); other indicators such as RMR= 0.033 (<0.05), SRMR =
0.052(<0.10), and RMSEA= 0.056 (<0.1) are located in the acceptable
range, showing good fit of the scale model (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988). In
addition, composite reliability (CR) is between 0.84 and 0.92, conforming
to the standard of over 0.7 (Bagozzi &Yi, 1988; Fornell & Larcker, 1981).
To sum up, the scale of relationship value achieves standards in overall
 Services Marketing Quarterly 57

Table 4. Exploratory factor analysis.

Explained Total explained
Construct and item Factor loading variance variance
Conscientious Orderly 0.674 17.75 17.75
Consistent 0.651
Reliable 0.744
Achievement Striving 0.805
Secure 0.672
Thoughtful 0.652
Intelligent 0.742
Compassionate Affectionate 0.813 13.39 31.15
Altruistic 0.729
Cheerful 0.835
Comforting 0.756
Spirited Assertive 0.689 12.69 43.84
Daring 0.657
Determined 0.748
Efficient 0.791
Hard Working 0.746
Innovative Openness to Experience 0.819 10.83 54.68
Original 0.755
Up to Date 0.717
Wholehearted Sincere 0.789 10.09 64.77
Intimate 0.809
truthful 0.787
Eligible Competent 0.833 9.04 74.18
Confident 0.820
Sophisticated 0.875
KMO 0.927
Bartlett’s test of Sphericity
chi-square 3494.766
degree of freedom (df ) 300
Significance 0.000

goodness-of-fit and composite reliability. We therefore continue to examine

the convergent validity of the scale. As shown in Table 4, each item
attains a high factor loading between 0.67 ~ 0.92 and a significance level
with t-value all over 2.58, most of which reach the standard of 0.7; aver-
age variance extracted (AVE) lies between .59~.79, conforming to the
standard of 0.5, which demonstrates good convergent validity (Anderson
& Gerbing, 1988; Fornell & Larcker, 1981) (Table 5).

Findings

The main purpose of this study was the conceptualization and determi-
nation of a physician’s brand personality in health service. The results
studies indicate that brand personality constitutes a valuable instrument
for physician brand management and that brand personality can be mea-
sured with a six-dimensional, 25-item scale. Hence, conducting EFA and
CFA, this study develops 6 factors including ‘Conscientious,’ ‘Compassionate,’
‘Spirited,’ ‘Innovative,’ ‘Wholehearted,’ and ‘Eligible,’ all of which involve
58 R. SHAFIEE ET AL.

Table 5. Conformity factor analysis.

Construct and item Factor loading t - value CR AVE
Conscientious Orderly 0.80 12.172 0.916 0.609
Consistent 0.72 10.792
Reliable 0.77 11.634
Achievement 0.86 13.357
Striving
Secure 0.74 11.160
Thoughtful 0.79 11.908
Intelligent 0.77 –
Compassionate Affectionate 0.83 12.139 0.876 0.638
Altruistic 0.80 11.689
Cheerful 0.79 11.558
Comforting 0.77 –
Spirited Assertive 0.76 11.788 0.878 0.591
Daring 0.67 10.093
Determined 0.77 12.107
Efficient 0.82 12.961
Hard Working 0.81 –
Innovative Openness to 0.81 10.868 0.842 0.642
Experience
Original 0.70 13.170
Up to Date 0.88 –
Wholehearted Sincere 0.81 13.272 0.869 0.688
Intimate 0.80 13.372
truthful 0.88 –
Eligible Competent 0.92 18.438 0.918 0.789
Confident 0.86 16.759
Sophisticated 0.88 –

25 measurement items, whose results are significantly supported by reli-

ability and construct validity (Figure 1).
The dimensions highlight the significance of both practical and enthu-
siastic brand associations in today’s increasingly competitive healthcare
market. To demonstrate, the associations involved in the Conscientious
dimension are relevant to health referrals’ assurance and a reliable deci-
sion-making process. Most of the previous studies whose structure and
stability we authenticated for developing our Brand Personality Scale (BPS)
like the most famous ones such as Asker’s (BPS) study and other research
had all concentrated on products brand personality (Ang & Lim, 2006;
Azoulay & Kapferer, 2003; Hoeffler & Keller, 2003; Sung & Kim, 2010),
corporations or places (Ahmad & Thyagaraj, 2014; Schade et al., 2014)
while service brand personality and the service provider brand personality
were ignored. On the other hand, the results of our study show that
physicians with authenticate traits have more proficiency in consumers’
view. When consumers perceived a credible and reliable service that can
offered by a physician, they think of him/her as an authentic and trustable
brand. Furthermore, our results suggest that different physicians perceive
special brands differently in terms of their brand personality, and they
can maximize their individual brand awareness by presenting their traits
in service encounter interactions with consumers.
 Services Marketing Quarterly 59

Figure 1. Physician’s brand personality measurement model.

General discussion and conclusion

Although prior research has pointed out the importance of branding in
healthcare markets (Corbin et al., 2001), marketing managers in healthcare
have little guidance regarding how to strategically position their brands
in the competitive market (Ang & Lim, 2006). Brand personality has been
acknowledged as a valuable positioning tool in consumer markets for
increasing customers’ trust (Berry, 2000; Johar et al., 2005), and it enables
60 R. SHAFIEE ET AL.

them to better visualize the service process (Kim et al., 2008). The devel-
opment of (PBP) helps healthcare service managers and physicians stra-
tegically to differentiate their brands along with these six proposed scale
dimensions that include Conscientious, Compassionate, Spirited, Innovative,
Wholehearted and Eligible.
This research provides clear guidance on what constitutes physician
brand personality and what items comprise brand personality concept in
healthcare market. By exploiting physician brand personality scale, it could
has a tool for tracking their service brand personality. If this model is
used over a period of time, it will enable physicians to determine the
effective healthcare brand personality for themselves. Planning for building
a professional brand personality is crucial for saying that physicians are
responsible for their brand and they will be responsible in their relation-
ship with patients. One of the most important marketing efforts to dif-
ferentiate physicians’ brands is related to the Eligible dimension (i.e.,
Competent, Confident and Sophisticated); ‘‘a physician that is perceived
to be imaginative may provide more Reliability and reliability feeling for
patients than other physicians and it can be more qualified and authentic.
Physicians with innovative ideas (Original, up to date) are thought to be
able to introduce their brand personality more creatively and distinguish
themselves from other physicians. The study found that brand personality
dimension of spirited (Assertive, daring, determined, efficient, hardworking)
positively influenced compatibility with physicians. Thus, for a physician
to be highly imaginative could contribute to having more consumers by
making themselves distinct from competitors. Specifically, the wholehearted
valuable and its traits (truthful, intimate, sincere) this may reflect an
emphasis on physicians’ personal and moral accountability.
Considering the importance of relationship marketing and its effect on
consumer perception (Louis & Lombart, 2010; Carlson et al., 2009) that
is mentioned in previous research, that physician should strengthen the
emotional load of their brand in service encounter contact point by char-
acterizing some traits in compassionate dimension (Affectionate, Comforting,
cheerful) to affect personal preference of consumers. It can cause long-
term relationships and it makes a positive brand association for consumers
(Louis & Lombart, 2010).
Healthcare brand managers might benefit from positioning physician
brand in terms of the conscientious dimension. Conscientious dimension
items (orderly, reliable, secure, thoughtful, and consistent) help physicians
to build relationships on a more emotional value that makes the physician’s
brand attain a high level of trustworthiness and make the sense of com-
mitment in the customer’s mind. The study also indicated that enhancing
the extent of consumer perception about the credibility of physician brand
 Services Marketing Quarterly 61

can positively influence the consumer’s trust to a brand and make them
loyal to the brand (Kang et al., 2016; Avis, 2012). Healthcare marketers,
physician brand consultant, etc. need to understand how their consumers
evaluate their brand’s personality by using the newly developed scale.
Thereupon, marketing practitioners in healthcare service could determine
which brand personality dimensions should be emphasized in order to
form a strong relationship with their consumers by using this scale of
(PBP) measurement.

Limitation and future research

The relationships between physician traits and consumers’ ideal self may
have enhanced the role of physician brand personality in consumer atti-
tude. In this study, tried to present a credible model for effective traits
of physician for brand personality creation. This research is the first one
to develop a brand personality scale for the physicians in healthcare and
also is the first one that concentrates on a new concept of human brand
personality in healthcare. Healthcare organizations and physicians in Iran
are limited in their ability to enhance their brand primarily, because they
are not legally permitted to have any trade advertising (Moghimehfar &
Nasr-Esfahani, 2011); however, in some special countries, commercial
advertising in healthcare sector isn’t forbidden, so this discrepancy may
affect the generalization of results. Study one was used to identify specific
attributes from Aaker’s (1997) as well as more than nineteen brand per-
sonality scales that were deemed appropriate for evaluating professional
physician brand, and in this step theoretical sampling was used for gath-
ering idea and items reduction. By using this method of sampling, we
justify utilizing a single measurement scale by the experts’ idea and expe-
rience. The next studies can use more new scales that have been published
after 2014 and use the other methods of item reduction for gathering
traits. Our study envelops only a special sample of cultures, Future research
could cover more countries and apply additional cultural measures in
order to account for the possibility of cultural diversity in nations (Kang
et al., 2016). However, previous research on brand personality has shown
that cultural adjustments are substantially different from one another, so
it could have a particular point that is relevant in this kind of culture
and social situation (Aaker et al., 2001; Sung & Tinkham, 2005). Therefore,
further cross-cultural research of brand personality structure might give
scholars a more complete insight into the unique values of respective
cultures (Avis, 2012). Further exploration and description of key personality
factors of service providers can concentrate on the items and traits that
are indicated by consumers to be more important as human brand
62 R. SHAFIEE ET AL.

personality creators within their culture. Most services have a unique

market attribution; it will likely be necessary in future studies to determine
which kind of brand personality attributes are most associated with each
kind of services like: Lawyers, Psychologists, architects, etc.

ORCID
Reza Shafiee http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3318-1840

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