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On the basis of the social identity and congruity theories, the present research aims to propose that value congruity directly affects customer–brand identification (CBI), affective brand commitment and customer–brand engagement (CBE), which, in turn, paves the way for advancing consumer relationships with hospitality brands, as measured through brand loyalty. As such, this study serves to enhance existing insight into customer relationship management dynamics, with a particular focus on hospitality brands.

The present study develops a theoretical framework that is empirically investigated by using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling analyses. Data were collected by using a self-administered questionnaire of 340 customers of four- and five-star hotel brands in India.

The results suggest value congruity as an important driver of CBI, affective commitment and CBE within hospitality brands. The results also reveal CBI to act as a significant predictor of affective commitment, CBE and brand loyalty. Furthermore, affective commitment and CBE are the significant drivers of loyalty to hospitality brands.

The research is exploratory in nature and is restricted to four- and five-star hotel customers, thereby reflecting important limitations of this study. Given these issues, ample opportunities exist for further research to further explore and/or validate the reported findings.

The current research provides new insights for marketing practitioners planning or implementing long-term customer relationship management strategi3es that centre on customer–brand identification, customer–brand engagement and brand loyalty.

Despite existing insights, empirical investigation into the proposed conceptual relationships remains limited to date, particularly in the hospitality industry. By offering empirical evidence in this area, this study adds to the extant body of knowledge on CBI/CBE-centric customer relationship management.

Sobre la base de los planteamientos teóricos de las Teorías de la identidad social y de la congruencia, este trabajo propone que la congruencia de valores afecta directamente a la identificación del consumidor con la marca, al compromiso afectivo y vínculo emocional con la misma, lo cual clarifica la manera con la que construir relaciones de los consumidores con las marcas hoteleras, aproximado a través de la lealtad. Es por ello que este estudio sirve para poner en valor las dinámicas existentes actualmente en la gestión de las relaciones con los clientes con un particular énfasis en el mercado hotelero.

Este trabajo desarrolla un marco teórico que es empíricamente contrastado a través del análisis de ecuaciones estructurales. Los datos fueron recogidos a partir de cuestionarios auto-administrados a una muestra de 340 clientes de hoteles de 4 y 5 estrellas en la India.

Los resultados sugieren que la congruencia de valores es un importante factor explicativo de la identificación del consumidor con la marca, el compromiso afectivo y el vínculo emocional con las marcas de hoteles. También se demuestra que la identificación con la marca actúa como un significativo predictor del compromiso afectivo, el vínculo emocional y la lealtad a la marca. Adicionalmente, el compromiso afectivo y el vínculo emocional ejercen un efecto significativo en la lealtad con la marca.

Esta investigación tiene una naturaleza exploratoria y sus resultados se limitan al contexto de los hoteles de 4 y 5 estrellas. Sobre la base de los resultados obtenidos, se abre un amplio número de oportunidades para el desarrollo de futuras investigaciones que confirmen validez de los resultados obtenidos.

Los resultados obtenidos proporcionan interesantes líneas de actuación para que los directivos de marketing planifiquen e implementen sus estrategias de desarrollo de relaciones con los clientes en torno a la identificación con la marca, el vínculo emocional y la lealtad hacia la misma.

Las evidencias empíricas existentes hasta la fecha son bastantes limitadas hasta la fecha, en particular en la industria hotelera. En este sentido, el presente trabajo proporciona evidencias empíricas en este ámbito y enriquece la literatura existente sobre la gestión de las relaciones con los clientes bajo un enfoque de identificación y vínculo emocional con la marca.

Travel and tourism is an imperative economic activity in most countries around the world. The industry has momentous indirect and induced impacts apart from its direct economic impact. The purpose of this paper is to test the applicability of brand interaction and perceived quality theory in the formation of brand trust, and the impact of affective commitment and brand trust toward advocacy intentions in the context of the Indian hospitality industry. This study also examines how emotional, and experiential hospitality brand relationship with the consumers can be developed in the emerging economies.

A total of 430 respondents participated in the study. Empirical evidence from depth interviews and data were garnered into a conceptual model. The proposed model was tested using structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that perceived quality and brand interaction forms brand trust and trust is the key factor in establishing emotional (affective) commitment between the customer and the hospitality brand. The study also suggests that emotional commitment in customers help them in becoming brand advocates. The findings of the research will help hospitality brand strategists in developing successful branding strategies.

This research examines the advantage of customers’ relationship and their meaningful brand connections in the hospitality context. The study establishes a relationship among antecedents of trust, trust and commitment which can lead toward brand advocacy.

The findings provide insight for hospitality brand managers in developing effective branding strategies for their organizations. This study inspects the advantages of cultivating meaningful brand connections and relationships with consumers in the Indian hospitality sector.

Salesperson performance is accepted as a relevant factor of retailing success. However, scarce studies reveal the relationship between sales performance and brand relationship. The purpose of this study is both, from one side, to empirically demonstrate the impact of salesperson brand attachment (SBA) on sales performance and, on the other side, to identify the mediators of this relationship in small retailing.

A survey was conducted with a sample of 206 small retailers from different sectors of an emerging country. The proposed model was tested using partial least squares–structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) in SmartPLS3.

The results demonstrated that SBA is relevant to driving sales performance through two relevant paths – one following SBA–satisfaction–performance and one path following the SBA–commitment–performance. The model was able to explain 63% of the outcome performance.

Regarding small retailers, where the owners, employees and managers have higher levels of interaction than the large national retail chains, the marketing executives must invest in improving the attachment to the brand and create emotional bonds and cognition between marketers and the brand. They must develop strategies to promote job satisfaction and organizational commitment because they determine performance.

Despite the relevance of small businesses for economies worldwide and the importance of salesperson brand relationships, no study has been developed to demonstrate the impacts of such relationships on salesperson performance in retailing. Furthermore, in addition to the central role of organizational commitment in the sales research, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore how to mediate the relationship between brand attachment and sales performance.

El rendimiento del vendedor se acepta como un factor relevante para el éxito del comercio minorista. Sin embargo, los estudios que revelan la relación entre el resultado de las ventas y la relación con la marca son escasos. El propósito de este estudio es, por un lado, demostrar empíricamente el impacto del apego a la marca del vendedor (SBA) en el resultado de las ventas y, por otro lado, identificar los mediadores de esta relación en el comercio minorista.

Se realizó una encuesta con una muestra de 206 vendedores de pequeños minoristas provenientes de diferentes sectores de un país emergente. El modelo estructural se analizó mediante ecuaciones estructurales basada en mínimos cuadrados (PLS-SEM) utilizando SmartPLS3.

Los resultados mostraron que el SBA es esencial para impulsar el resultado de las ventas a través de dos caminos relevantes: uno siguiendo el SBA-satisfacción-rendimiento y la otra dirección siguiendo el SBA-compromiso-rendimiento. El modelo fue capaz de explicar el 63% del rendimiento.

Con respecto a los pequeños minoristas, donde los propietarios, empleados y gerentes tienen niveles más altos de interacción que las grandes cadenas minoristas nacionales, los ejecutivos de marketing deben invertir en mejorar el apego a la marca y crear vínculos emocionales y cognitivos entre los vendedores y la marca. Deben desarrollar estrategias para promover la satisfacción laboral y el compromiso organizacional ya que determinan el rendimiento.

A pesar de la relevancia de las pequeñas empresas para las economías de todo el mundo y la importancia de las relaciones de marca en los vendedores, no se ha desarrollado ningún estudio para demostrar los impactos de tales relaciones en el rendimiento de los vendedores en el comercio minorista. Además, aparte del papel central del compromiso organizacional en la investigación en ventas, este es el primer estudio que explora cómo media la relación entre el apego a la marca y el resultado de las ventas.

The purpose of this study is to operationalise and measure the effects of negative customer engagement (CE) in conjunction with positive CE. Both valences are explored through affective, cognitive and behaviour dimensions, and, in relation to the antecedent of involvement and outcome of word-of-mouth (WOM). It also explores the moderating influence of service context by examining engagement within a social service versus a social networking site (SNS). Engagement with the dual focal objects of a service brand and a service community are also examined.

Structural equation modelling is used to analyse 625 survey responses.

Involvement is a strong driver of positive CE, and positive CE has a strong effect on WOM. These findings are consistent across the “brand” and “community” object, suggesting positive CE is mutually reinforced by different objects in a relationship. Positive CE is also found to operate consistently across the service types. Involvement is a moderately negative driver of negative CE, and negative CE is a positive driver of WOM. These relationships operate differently across the objects and service types. Involvement has a stronger inverse effect on negative CE for the social service, diverging from assumptions that negative CE is reflective of highly involved customers. Interestingly, negative CE has a stronger effect on WOM in the social service, highlighting the active and vocal nature of customers within this service context.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to quantitatively measure positive and negative valences of engagement concurrently, and examine the moderating effect of dual objects across contrasting service types.

The current study aims to propose and empirically investigate a conceptual model of the most relevant antecedents and consequences of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) attribution, thus providing a practical and concise model as well as examining brand attachment as a mediator explaining the relationship between CSR attribution and its consequences.

A between-subjects experimental design was employed. The study included two experimental conditions; intrinsic and extrinsic CSR attribution and a control condition. An online self-administered survey was utilised for data collection. The sample was a convenience sample of 336 university students. Both one-way between-groups ANOVA and Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) were utilised for hypotheses testing.

The most significant antecedents of CSR attribution in order of importance are the firm's approach to CSR communication, past corporate social performance, CSR type and the firm's call for customers' participation in its CSR. CSR attribution exerted a significant direct positive impact on brand attachment and trust. Three significant indirect consequences of CSR attribution were PWOM intention, purchase intention and brand loyalty intention. Whereas trust played a significant mediating role between CSR attribution and its three indirect consequences, brand attachment exerted significant mediation only between CSR attribution and brand loyalty intention. Brand attachment might mediate the relationship between CSR attribution and purchase intention. However, brand attachment failed to play a mediating role between CSR attribution and PWOM intention.

Several studies marginally investigated CSR attribution. Despite the vital role of CSR attribution in how consumers receive firms' CSR engagement, the availability of CSR attribution-centric studies is limited. By introducing a model of the most relevant antecedents and consequences of CSR attribution, this study aids in understanding the psychological mechanism underlying consumers' CSR attribution and provides valuable implications.

This study explores the effect of internal branding on organisational financial performance and brand loyalty with the mediating role of psychological empowerment.

The data gathered from 200 Pasargad insurance employees in Iran were analysed. Structural equation modelling and R were used to evaluate the model. Financial performance was measured by four concepts (ROI, ROE, Sales growth, ROA) based on available data from March 2010 to March 2020.

The results revealed that internal branding and psychological empowerment have no significant effect on financial performance, but both have a significant positive effect on brand loyalty. Likewise, the mediating role of psychological empowerment on the subject of the impact of internal branding on brand loyalty was confirmed. Furthermore, psychological empowerment did not play a mediating role in the impact of internal branding on financial performance.

The findings of this study could be important for managers of organisations active in the insurance industry to highlight internal branding and enhance psychological empowerment and employee brand loyalty. Moreover, managers' perception of the effective role of psychological empowerment to enhance employee brand loyalty is another practical aspect of this research.

Considering the mediating role of psychological empowerment to the effect of internal branding on financial performance and brand loyalty is an innovative aspect of the present study. Meanwhile, the use of R software for VB-SEM was another point to surge the value of this paper.