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The purpose of this study was to develop an initial understanding of sport brand ambassador participants' experiences in sponsored user generated branding (UGB) programs to assist sport organizations in developing the most mutually beneficial brand ambassador programs possible.

Semi-structured interviews were held with six individuals who serve as brand ambassadors for various sport brands. Data were analyzed using qualitative thematic analysis.

Participants were intrinsically motivated to serve in brand ambassador roles. Their experiences were impacted by whether their personal expectations were met, perceived relationship with the brand, perceived value to the brand, and perceived amount of work involved. They reported the best aspects of participation were a sense of community and free products and/or discounts. The most challenging aspects included not wanting to come across as a marketer, self-inflicted pressure to perform a certain way for the brand, pressure to purchase products, and lack of clear communication from the brand.

As this study was qualitative, the findings are unique to the participants and the brands they represent. Therefore, the findings may be used to guide other research and brands but are not generalizable.

Sport brands wishing to employ sponsored UGB strategies such as brand ambassador programs must set clear expectations for ambassadors, communicate regularly, and develop a sense of community with and among ambassadors.

This study contributes to the limited sport management research on sponsored UGB and offers theoretical and practical implications in the areas of sport marketing and branding.

The aim of this chapter is to shed light on a growing phenomenon in communication practice: employees speaking voluntarily for, about or on behalf of their organization, hereafter labelled as corporate ambassadors. The goal of this qualitative study is to analyze the role of corporate ambassadors within an organization and explore the perceived benefits and risks from three perspectives: the communication department, other departments such as marketing or human resources, and corporate ambassadors themselves. The research is based on an interdisciplinary literature review and 25 qualitative in-depth interviews with employees in one large, internationally operating German organization. By combining the theoretical and empirical insights, a conceptual framework that depicts the benefits (e.g., joy, increased trust, positive impact on reputation) and risks (e.g., work stress, lack of integration, loss of quality) of integrating corporate ambassadors into the overall communication of the organization was developed. In addition, this chapter suggests two typologies that help to distinguish between different roles of communication professionals and of corporate ambassadors. The contribution of this study is to lay a groundwork for further discussions about corporate ambassadors in the field of corporate communications. The chapter outlines directions for future research and implications for practice on how the framework can be applied in organizations.

To provide an employee perspective on ambassadorship in the context of corporate communication, the purpose of this paper is to explore how employees relate to and experience ambassadorship.

The study has a qualitative approach, and the empirical material consists of semi-structured interviews with, and focus groups of, employees of seven organizations in both the public and private sectors. The paper draws on a contemporary understanding of identity where identity is perceived as an ongoing reflexive process in which employees negotiate and construct of their selves through relating to role expectations and interacting with others. Therefore, ambassadorship is understood as a social-identity, or persona, that is referenced by employees in their identity work.

The findings indicate that employees embrace this persona as they imagine that external stakeholders, colleagues and managers expect it of them. However, the ambassador persona also gives rise to identity-tensions both during work and off work.

The paper contributes a novel way to understand ambassadorship as well as highlighting some of the more problematic aspects of it and furthering the understanding of the concept.

The findings highlight that ambassadorship can have problematic consequences that needs to be addressed. They suggest that the employee perspective should be taken into consideration in internal communication education and training.

The paper contributes a novel employee perspective on ambassadorship.

The purpose of this paper is to address the contemporary interest in participatory destination branding. Because of a lack of empirical and evaluative studies on this form of branding, the current case study examines a volunteer resident ambassador program, which began as part of Aarhus, Denmark’s year as a European City of Culture in 2017, and has become permanent because of its success.

The case study is based on official document analyses, participant observations of program activities, and interviews with volunteer program managers and volunteers who greet cruise ship tourists.

Findings indicate that while the two managers and the volunteers all report on three volunteer roles – personal hosts, place promoters and providers of information – they prioritize and understand the roles differently. Similarly, the volunteers’ encounters with visitors are all unique, and this inevitably results in the conveyance of unruly and incidental destination images.

This unruliness is not necessarily problematic: despite the wide-spread interest in the management of participative branding initiatives, it is seen to be the lack of explicit brand-centered management that fosters the program’s positive outcomes, including authentic and pleasant interactions between volunteers and tourists, which, in turn, result in positive attitudes amongst tourists toward their visit.

This study discovers that positive participatory destination branding outcomes depend on managers respecting the ambassadors’ coveted autonomy, and letting go of control of a destination brand. Because of the growing hostility toward mass tourism in cities internationally, it is also noted that a resident ambassador program’s success is expected to depend on residents’ positive attitudes toward tourists.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of managerial strategies in promoting employee brand consistent behavior. Using a recently developed holistic model of behavioral branding, that suggests that a wide array of managerial strategies affects the branding process, this study addresses two specific questions: what communication strategies, in the opinion of managers, sustain employee brand consistent behavior? And what are the most important factors, both contextual and related to their cognitive-emotional states, that employees think affect their brand ambassadorship behavior?

A long-term research program was conducted based on a multiple methods research strategy to answer the two questions. The choice of different methods was mainly based on the specific characteristics of the two targets: communication managers and employees. The first one based on interviews with 32 managers, and the second one based on a case study of a single company.

The results show that enablement-oriented strategies are more effective than communication-oriented strategies in sustaining employee brand builder roles. Weak employee commitment, unsatisfactory external communication, and low levels of motivation are strong contextual factors inhibiting employee attitudes to brand ambassadorship, one of the most relevant employee brand consistent behaviors in competitive contexts. The main practical implication is that companies should engage employees as brand ambassadors, not by means of prescriptions of in-role behavior, but enablement strategies leading to authentic and voluntary behaviors; besides, that companies should put a significant effort in “preparing the soil,” i.e. investing in enhancing employee commitment, level of motivation, and understanding/alignment with the external communication.

The main practical implication is that companies should engage employees as brand ambassadors not by means of in-role behavior prescriptions rather by means of enablement strategies leading to authentic and voluntary behaviors. Besides, managers should invest significant efforts in enhancing employee motivation, commitment, and understanding/alignment to external communication as they represent key factors in sustaining brand ambassadorship behaviors.

The values of the study lies in having highlighted the crucial role of enablement-oriented strategies, and the relevance of specific contextual variables affecting the attitude of employee toward brand consistent behaviors.

This research aims to investigate the factors which contribute to the power of luxury brands in the stores and the means through which brand power meaning transfers to the clients.

The research protocol follows a phenomenological approach, through analyses of narratives of customers with lived shopping experiences in luxury stores. Data were collected in two phases: first, a collection of experiences from clients with different cultural backgrounds in the same store; second, a comparison of experiences for the same client in thirty-three luxury stores around the world. This cross-examination procedure enhances the trustworthiness of the findings.

Although French and Raven ' s typology of power (referent, reward, coercive, legitimate, expert) is relevant when studying the luxury brand-client relationship, it is not sufficient to explain entirely the sources of the luxury brand power. Through the brand cathedral (the flagship store), the brand ambassadors (sales representative), the brand protocol (rituals and selling ceremony) and the brand treasures (the products), the luxury brand exerts an auratic power which achieves the sacralization of the brand.

These marks of power are difficult to transfer virtually through internet websites. To establish this power, luxury brands need a control over their operations, at least the visual merchandising and the customer relationship. This reinforces the importance of retailing in the luxury industry and the strategic role of company-owned-stores, particularly in “new luxury markets” where the auratic power of the brand is not necessarily established. Additionally, when there is power asymmetry in a service encounter, the customer becomes “hyper-vigilant” regarding the service provided. In luxury stores, the salespersons should be trained to deliver a luxury service, personalized to the very needs of the client.

To the authors ' knowledge, this research is the first to investigate consumers ' perception of luxury brand power.

With the advent of technology and internet banking, the role and value of bank’s websites have increased. Additionally, the Islamic banking boom has also increased the role of Shariah-based banking in the market. But neither web-based information nor Shariah board members have been investigated for their possible effects on the branding of Islamic banks. Against this backdrop, this study aims to explore web-based information and Shariah board as a source of branding of Islamic financial institutions (IFIs).

An interpretivism-based thematic inquiry is carried out through semi-structured interviews of 22 customers of Islamic banks.

The findings of the study highlighted the fact that customers’ perceived web-based information is in line with the Shariah objectives but showed low level of trust on that information. They assumed that the practices are not consistent with this information. Moreover, the Shariah board members were considered as brand ambassadors, and customers valued board members more than the Shariah board and Islamic bank itself. Findings further highlight the more knowledge customers have about the Shariah board members (experience, qualification, achievements, etc.) the greater is the impact on the branding of the IFIs.

This study offers a novel perspective by considering the value of web-based information and Shariah board on branding of Islamic banks. As there is no such study available in literature, up to the best of researchers' knowledge, the qualitative inquiry may suffice the study objectives and research questions.

The chapter develops a typology of eight different expected employee communication roles based on literature in public relations (PR), corporate communication and related fields. As PR professionals are increasingly taking on a coaching and training role, and communication technology has made employees more visible and approachable, employees more and more take on active roles in the communication with external publics. While PR professionals’ roles are conceptualized fairly well, no framework exists that describes the many communication roles that employees play in contemporary organizations. In the chapter, it is found that employees externally (1) embody, (2) promote, and (3) defend the organization. In addition, employees use communication to (4) scout for information and insights about environmental changes, and (5) build and maintain relationships with stakeholders. Internally, employees use communication to (6) make sense of information, (7) initiate and stimulate innovation, and (8) criticize organizational behaviour and decisions. The typology highlights that employees increasingly fulfil the tactic communication roles as producers and executers of corporate communication as social media have made them more visible and approachable. The communication roles require considerable tactical skills and resources on the part of employees, which they may not always possess sufficiently. PR professionals can play a coaching role in terms of helping employees frame content and communicate in a manner appropriate for the organization, the context and the media. The chapter can help PR professionals and scholars understand the changed role of PR professionals, as well as the changed relationships between organizations and their environment, in the context of dissolving organizational boundaries.

This paper deals with the importance of residents within place branding. The aim of this paper is to examine the different roles that residents play in the formation and communication of place brands and explores the implications for place brand management.

The paper is based on theoretical insights drawn from the combination of the distinct literatures on place branding, general marketing, tourism, human geography, and collaborative governance. To support its arguments, the paper discusses the participation of citizens in governance processes as highlighted in the urban governance literature as well as the debate among marketing scholars over participatory marketing and branding.

The paper arrive at three different roles played by the residents: as an integral part of the place brand through their characteristics and behavior; as ambassadors for their place brand who grant credibility to any communicated message; and as citizens and voters who are vital for the political legitimization of place branding. These three roles make the residents a very significant target group of place branding.

Residents are largely neglected by place branding practice and their priorities are often misunderstood, even though they are not passive beneficiaries but are active partners and co‐producers of public goods, services and policies. This paper highlights that only meaningful participation and consultation can produce a more effective and sustainable place branding strengthening the brand communication and avoiding the pitfall of developing “artificial” place brands.

This study examines the research that has been conducted on user-generated advertising content in the social marketing strategies of commercial brands to understand the phenomenon, explore academic interest in the topic and identify areas of limited thematic coverage.

A systematic review of existing scientific literature in the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus was carried out using the PRISMA protocol. A co-occurrence matrix was used to review emerging topics on user-generated content (UGC) and influencer marketing, allowing the identification of articles (n = 59) related to the objective of this research.

Most research has analyzed UGC in images or text, but only very few have addressed videos and other digital formats (such as reels, image carousels or podcasts), although there is sufficient work focused on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. There was no evidence of work exploring the effects, repercussions and possible dangers of uncontrolled brand exposure through Unofficial Brand Ambassadors.

The literature review has allowed finding important areas of future research that the scientific community has not sufficiently addressed. Likewise, this work shows structurally several classifications of UGC, which will facilitate future research to deepen and broaden these categories.