Social dynamics and stakeholder relationships in personal branding

Personal branding is a rapidly growing phenomenon taking place in multistakeholder ecosystems. This artide builds on ethnographic fieldwork from the rock-climbing industry in the US and Europe to show how stakeholders enable and shape the personal branding practices of professional climbers. Findings demonstrate that personal branding is a highly social practice wherein stakeholders provide three types of resources to elaborate personal brands: material resources, informational resources, and symbolic resources. In addition, six main conventions guiding stakeholders' relationships and enabling resource transfer are then identified and theorized. Finally, these findings are built upon to suggest a framework to analyze stakeholder cooperation in personal branding.