Athlete branding in social media: A mixed method research to discover the wishes and expectations of Instagram followers

This study is about athlete branding in social media. The aim is to explore the wishes and expectations of the athletes' social media followers (target audiences) from various perspectives. Because in terms of athlete branding, the wishes and expectations of the target audiences are an important component that should be taken into account. In other words, athlete branding activities should be carried out in line with the wishes and expectations of the target audience. In this respect, this study focused on the wishes and expectations of the target audience, and this context, various findings that were guiding for practitioners were obtained. The desingn of the study follows an exploratory sequential pattern. In this direction, the wishes and expectations of the participants were determined at the qualitative stage, and then these requests and expectations; were compared in terms of gender, social generation, and social status variables. In the quantitative stage, the participation levels of the participants regarding the wishes and expectations determined in the qualitative stage were revealed. At the quantitative stage, the participants' level of participation for each request and expectation item was also examined to see if it changed in terms of gender, social generation, and social status variables. The purpose of these quantitative analyses is to test and broaden the understanding of the qualitative findings. The quantitative findings that emerged as a result largely supported the qualitative findings.