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Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the role of internal branding (IB) in fostering branding citizenship behavior in the hospitality context as well as the mechanisms underlying the relationship.

Design/methodology/approach: This study obtained empirical evidence from 377 hotel employees in North Cyprus.

Findings: Our findings support the positive relationship between IB and brand citizenship behavior (BCB). The evidence was found for a dual and sequential mediating role of brand trust and brand commitment. Moreover, the organizational climate serviced as a moderator to influence the positive relationships between IB and BCB.

Practical implication: This study has shown that employees are rewarding firms involved in IB initiatives in the form of BCB – directly and indirectly –through trust and commitment. This finding can advance managers’ understanding, enabling them to better manage their IB initiatives to achieve the most effective outcomes.

Originality/value: The research advances convergence between IB and BCB research streams, which has been under-explored in the tourism context. Besides, it extends the IB and brand citizenship literature through a novel dual and sequential mediation mechanism and organizational climate as a novel moderator.

The purpose of the study is to measure the mediating relationship of online buying intentions between narcissism, materialism and brand experience and their effect on luxury purchase behaviour of luxury items by Phuket, Thailand customers. The study has used primary data collection techniques to gather data and used purposive sampling to analyse the data. The study's sample size is 250 respondents who prefer to buy luxury items. The research has used Smart PLS software to measure the relationship through bootstrapping and algorithms. The study has found significant positive mediation of online buying intentions between narcissism, materialism and brand experience and their effect on luxury purchase behaviour of luxury items. This study suggests the theoretical and practical implications for purchasing luxury behaviour from managerial, policymakers and researched perspectives. This study also discusses the future directions and limitations.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how negative emotions toward brands, especially brand hate, impact anti-brand consumption behavior, including brand avoidance and further brand switching, through the intervening mediators of negative word-of-mouth (nWOM) and protest behavior as well as within contingencies.

Existing scales are adapted, and the field study is conducted in Malang, Indonesia. Based on purposive sampling, 275 respondents in three different malls complete a questionnaire related to Sari Roti, a national brand suffering from a boycott. In all, 250 qualified questionnaires are eventually used for data analysis using partial least square.

This research supports the effect of brand hate on nWOM, which then influences protest behavior, subsequently driving consumers to avoid a particular brand and opt for an alternative. nWOM was also found to have a direct effect on brand avoidance. For moderating effects, brand social responsibility and social media usage were found to negatively and positively affect the brand hate–nWOM relationship, respectively.

The limited extant literature only addresses a simple direct–effect relationship between negative emotions and anti-brand consequences. Drawing on the positioning lens and the dis-identification view, this research provides deep insight through theorizing a sequential, four-stage framework regarding the effect of brand hate on brand avoidance and brand switching. This framework is also explored under contingencies, further advancing an understanding of this dynamic subject matter.

The practice of frontline employees articulating their brand voice and posting work-related content on social media has emerged; however, employee brand equity (EBE) research has yet to be linked to employees’ social media activity. This paper aims to take a methods-based approach to better understand employees’ roles as influencers. As such, its objective is to operationalize and apply the three EBE dimensions – brand consistent behavior, brand endorsement and brand allegiance – using Instagram data.

This qualitative research uses a case study of employee influencers at SoulCycle, a leading North American fitness company and examines 100 Instagram images and 100 captions from these influential employees to assess the three EBE dimensions.

Brand consistent behavior (what employees do) was the most important EBE dimension indicating that employees’ social media activities align with their employer’s values. Brand allegiance (what employees intend to do in the future) whereby employees self-identify with their employer on social media, followed. Brand endorsement (what employees say) was the least influential of the three EBE dimensions, which may indicate a higher level of perceived authenticity from a consumer perspective.

This research makes three contributions. First, it presents a novel measure of EBE using public Instagram data. Second, it represents a unique expansion and an evolution of King et al.’s (2012) model. Third, it considers employees’ work-related content on social media to understand employees’ role as influencers and their co-creation of EBE, which is currently an under-represented perspective in the internal branding literature.

This study aims to understand the effect of brand citizenship behaviors of hospitality employees on customers’ relation with the brand. A model, which links employee behaviors to customers’ evaluation of brand performance, brand trust and brand commitment, is proposed to provide further insight into how customers form their relation with a brand.

Data were collected from both customer-contact employees and passengers of a corporate airline company. Structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed model by using both employee and customer data in the same research model.

The results showed that even brand citizenship behaviors of employees did not affect brand commitment of customers directly; these behaviors explain customers’ commitment to a brand through influencing perceived brand performance of customers and their trust toward a brand. Overall, this study provided support for the impact of employees’ brand-related behaviors on consumers’ relation with the brand.

The results suggest that hospitality employees contribute to the brand success through their behaviors. This helps organizations to enhance brand-related behaviors of their employees to ensure long-term relationships not only with customers but also with their employees in a labor-intensive and high customer contact industry.

This research was one of the first to analyze the effects of employees’ brand supporting behaviors on consumers by using both employee and consumer data in the same research model within the hospitality context.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interrelationships between different foci of commitment, namely, department commitment (DC) and corporate brand commitment (CBC), and their relationship toward favorable employee behavior on the same level of aggregation.

A survey at a maximum care hospital in Germany was conducted (N = 366).

Integrating two contrasting frameworks (“key mediating concept” and “compatibility concept”) into a mixed model by using the accessibility-diagnosticity framework, support for the predictive nature of DC on CBC was found. Based on the compatibility principle, relationships between DC and department citizenship behavior (DCB) as well as between CBC and brand citizenship behavior (BCB) are empirically supported. Negligible spillover effects were found.

Understanding the relationship between DC and CBC shows new ways to strengthen CBC, as the generation of DC has synergetic effects on favorable employee behaviors. DC facilitates employee behavior supporting the department and has an indirect impact on BCB, which is extremely important in service sectors with limited differentiation potential.

This paper provides a new theoretical reasoning to derive relationships between different foci of commitments applicable for future research. Additionally, it is the first implementation of CBC in a multi-foci framework of commitments and favorable employee behaviors. Moreover, it is the first application of the BCB construct in a healthcare context. Finally, empirical support for a mixed concept approach over past models in a multi-foci framework is provided.

Many organizations expect their service engineers, or frontline employees (FLEs), to behave as brand advocates by engaging in favorable communication about the brand and its offerings toward customers. However, this approach is not without risk as customers may be disappointed or even frustrated with brand advocacy behavior in many service encounters. The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of FLEs’ brand advocacy on customer satisfaction with the service encounter, and identify the conditions under which the effects are detrimental. This paper specifically considers service issue severity and product newness as contingency conditions.

Building on social identification theory, the paper builds a conceptual model, which is empirically tested using a data set that matches data from service engineers, customers, and archival records from the after-sales service department of a globally operating business-to-business print and document management solutions provider.

This paper finds that brand advocacy behavior harms customer satisfaction especially in service encounters that involve simple service issues (e.g. maintenance) for products that are new to the market. Fortunately, brand identification can compensate this negative effect under many service conditions. While the joint effect of brand identification and advocacy is most beneficial for severe service issues of new products, no effect on customer satisfaction was found for established products.

This paper identifies those service situations in which brand advocacy is advisable and guides managers toward achieving more favorable customer evaluations.

Past research has considered several FLE branding activities in the frontline but the effects of brand advocacy have not been isolated. In addition, most studies have assumed the effects of employee brand-related behaviors on customer satisfaction to be universally positive rather than negative and focused on antecedents and not on moderators and consequences.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of brand-centered human resource management (HRM) on employees’ person–brand fit, brand commitment (BC) and brand citizenship behavior (BCB). In addition, the paper tests effects of BCB on customer satisfaction and citizenship behavior.

Data were collected from managers, front-line employees and customers of 22 international tourist hotels in Taiwan. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to investigate relationships between variables.

Multilevel results reveal positive connections between brand-centered HRM and BCB, mediated by person–brand fit and BC. Positive relationships were also found between BC and BCB, person–brand fit and BCB; BCB and customer satisfaction; and between customer satisfaction and customer citizenship behavior.

When employees’ personal values are consistent with brand values, employees will feel a closer connection to the brand and be more willing to dedicate themselves to brand-related activity. The model developed here can be tested in different cultures to ascertain the generalizability of the findings to Western contexts.

Support is provided for the positive effects of brand-centered HRM when employees internalize brand values as their own personal values. Hotel managers should ensure that employees are highly committed to the brand values and willing to deliver services to customers accordingly.

The paper provides measurement developments for person–brand fit and BC and deeper understanding of how brand-centered HRM can lead to positive changes in customer behavior.

This study aims to extend current research efforts by examining the dual role of salesperson brand and organizational identification in driving organizational citizenship behaviors, brand advocacy and ultimately brand market performance.

This study uses an online survey to collect data from a cross-sectional sample of salespeople. The measurement model and proposed research hypotheses are tested with SmartPLS.

Study results show that each level of identification has a stronger influence on the type of behaviors relevant to that foci of identification. That is, salesperson organizational identification has a significant and strong effect on organizational citizenship behavior while the influence of salesperson organizational identification on brand advocacy is not significant. Along the same lines, salesperson identification with the brand significantly influences brand advocacy behaviors but not their overall organizational citizenship behaviors. These empirical findings are consistent with assertions in the literature that variables (antecedents or outcomes) associated with identification at a certain level will have a stronger relationship with identification at that level.

Despite existing research efforts on the potential positive outcomes of salesperson identification, there is less empirical evidence regarding the dual role of brand and organizational identification. This research contributes to the current literature by proposing and empirically examining the differential (identity-matching) antecedents and outcomes of salespeople’s dual identification with the organization and the brand. Furthermore, existing research mostly focuses on organizational or sales management outcomes but not brand specifically related outcomes. Theoretically, this research draws on social identity theory to investigate the combined effect of salesperson brand and organizational identification on key brand-related outcomes. Managerially, this study provides empirically-based suggestions for managers interested in harnessing the power of identification.

This paper aims to investigate the process of internal brand management that makes employees identify with the corporate brand and produce positive attitudes and behaviors, thus contributing to customer satisfaction. Three constructs, brand‐centered HRM, brand psychological ownership, and brand citizenship behaviors, are utilized to examine the process of internal brand management. The first construct, brand‐centered human resource management (HRM), represents managerial practices that improve brand cognitions and brand attitude of employees. The second construct, brand psychological ownership, explains the psychological experiences that make employees feel brand ownership and then express altruistic spirit of the brand. The third construct, brand citizenship behaviors, shows that employees live the brand.

This multilevel research of collecting data from 453 employees, 172 supervisors, and 933 customers from 26 hotels demonstrates the results of different levels. Hierarchical linear modeling is utilized to investigate the relationships among these constructs.

Results at the individual level show that brand psychological ownership of employees has positive effects on brand citizenship behaviors, and all factors of these two constructs are also correlated positively. Results at the cross level demonstrate that brand‐centered HRM has positive effects on brand psychological ownership and brand citizenship behaviors. Organizational‐level brand citizenship behaviors positively affect customer satisfaction. Furthermore, brand psychological ownership partially mediates the relationship between brand‐centered HRM and brand citizenship behaviors.

An organization can adopt brand‐centered HR practices to make employees produce brand psychological ownership and brand citizenship behaviors, thus contributing to customer satisfaction. HR managers can strengthen employees' brand citizenship behaviors by fostering their brand psychological ownership feelings.

This paper explores the conception, measurement, and explanatory power of the new research construct (i.e. brand psychological ownership) on the effectiveness of internal brand management.