PHASES OF THE LIFE CYCLE OF UNIVERSITY SCIENTIFIC AND PEDAGOGICAL SPECIALIST’S BRAND

Abstract

The article considers the life cycle of a university scientific and pedagogical specialist's brand as a continuous period from the moment of gaining a high level of recognition by the target audience to the moment of loss of specified influence on the target audience. A direct correlation between the phases of a university scientific and pedagogical specialist's brand life cycle and starting points of the theory of innovation diffusion is proved there. The division of the life cycle of a brand into six phases is proposed. They are as follows: phase of development of branding technology, phase of the introduction of a university scientific and pedagogical specialistʼs brand into the educational and scientific activity of a university, phase of growth of personal and professional potential of a brand, phase of stabilization of interaction of image and reputation brand components; the phase of extinction of the university specialist’s brand and the phase of the brandʼs exit from the market of providing educational and scientific services. The inexpediency of purposefully avoiding the development phase of branding technology is argued, as such “dynamically oriented” branding does not take into account the peculiarities of the personal and professional potential of the specialist, as well as lacks systemic and strategic focus. It is specified that depending on the purpose of application, rebranding of the university professor’s brand can act as a connecting phase of a life cycle of a specialists’ brand and as a singular process of formation of a new university professor’s brand. It is emphasized that preventive or forced-consolidating rebranding by a university professor due to fixing a temporary decline in his brand demand by the target audience in a phase of growth of personal and professional potential is ineffective. Keywords: brand; university professor; life cycle; phase; differentiation; target audience; university; rebranding.