Building Physicians’ Personal Brand and Boosting Online Return: The Role of Social Media Engagement
Wenchao Du, Yabin Yang, Xitong Guo, and Doug Vogel
International Journal of Electronic Commerce,
Volume 29, Number 2, 2025, pp. 272-303.
Abstract:
As social media has become prevalent, its beneficial role in expertise development and social networking has drawn the attention of healthcare professionals. However, limited research has examined how physicians obtain online returns via efforts on social media, and few studies focus on physicians’ personal branding. Set in a joint context of social media and online healthcare community, this study investigates how physicians’ personal branding influences their online return drawing on social media affordances theory. We validate the proposed hypotheses using empirical data collected from one of China’s largest social media platforms and its linked online healthcare platform. The results verify the positive effect of physicians’ personal branding on online consultation business and the mediation role of social media engagement. Furthermore, we find that the topic richness strengthens the indirect effect of personal branding on physicians’ online return via social media engagement. This study thus enriches the research on personal branding and social media engagement and offers insights for practitioners and scholars alike on the success of personal branding.