Brand Personality of the Premier League of Iran\'s Soccer - Strategies and Consequences

Background. Brand Personality (BP) is one of the most commonly used concepts in marketing literature, and academicians and marketers believe in its benefits. Today, brand personality plays an important role in strategic management and it is considered as one of the most important tactics of an organization to gain a Competitive Advantage (CA). Objectives. This paper aims to investigate the factors that cause the growth and development of brand personality of the Premier League of Iran's Soccer and identify the actions and interactions resulting from this phenomenon, and the results and consequences of the use of these actions and interactions. Methods. To this end, the present study was conducted in the framework of a qualitative approach using the Grounded Theory (GT) method. The data collection tools included semi-structured in-depth interviews. Using the purposive sampling method, 23 individuals including academic elites, experts familiar with brand management issues in sports, certified managers and sports practitioners in soccer league organization, club managers, and sports media and brand specialists, were selected and interviewed. The obtained data were analyzed using the three-step process of open, axial and selective codings. Results. Based on the results obtained from the open coding of the qualitative interviews, 103 attributes were identified with regards to the factors that shape Premier League brand personality. The findings indicate that there are 83 effective attributes in the brand personality phenomenon and its growth and development. The required strategies and consequences of the brand personality in the Premier League of Iran's Soccer were classified into 9 concepts, including organizational attributes, team attributes, function, fans, direct resources, indirect resources, performance attributes, non-performance attributes, brand strength and relationships. Conclusion. Considering the key concepts associated with the formation of the brand personality of Premier League, namely the organizational attributes, team attributes, function and fans, executives and planners of the premier league of soccer can act and interact based on the provided strategies, so as to obtain the expected results, that is, emergence of the brand personality of premier league, and the consequences of this emergence, such as two-way communication with the customers and potential beneficiaries, and to strengthen the brand success variables such as the image, attitude, purchase preferences and services provided by the league.