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This paper aims to investigate the brand building behavior in the luxury hotel industry from the perspective of frontline employees. In particular, this study addresses the importance and relevance of supportive leadership, brand building behavior and customers’ perceived brand image in the hotel industry.

The research uses data from four luxury class (4 and 5 star) hotels in the Pearl River Delta of China. Contact with frontline employees yielded employee and customer data, with 243 of 369 employee questionnaires having one or more matches with 1,158 customer questionnaires. Hierarchical linear modeling was adopted to test the research model.

Luxury hotels benefit from managers who provide supportive leadership that encourages employee brand building behavior. In turn, employee brand building behavior influences customers’ positive perception of brand image.

Brand building behavior is a top-to-bottom process. Luxury hotels need to pay attention to internal brand building orientation, while managers should reinforce the organization’s cultural orientation and provide appropriate job skills training to improve employees’ willingness and ability to build the company’s brand.

Findings of this study contribute to the brand management literature and the hotel management literature by addressing important matters affecting the frontline employees’ brand building behavior.

This study aims to facilitate the understanding of brand building among owners/managers of SMEs by highlighting the relationships among the multidimensionality of brand orientation, brand-building behavior and brand identity.

In addressing the research issue, the study uses responses from 158 domesticated SMEs in North Macedonia, afterwards relying on structural equation modeling to test the research propositions.

This study validates brand orientation as a multidimensional term that is underlined by brand artefacts, norms and values. This study also validates the assumptions that brand orientation, brand-building behavior and brand identity are significantly related.

While it is possible that our evidence base is limited to the context studied, the research findings nevertheless contribute primarily to the emergent scholarship on SMEs' brand building.

This study has practical consequences for SMEs' brand building. More specifically, it enriches the understanding of the interrelationships between brand orientation, brand-building behavior and brand identity.

This study provides an advanced perspective of brand orientation as a complex phenomenon and further provides understanding of its relations to brand-building behavior and brand identity of the domesticated SMEs.

Integrating conservation of resources (COR) and complexity theories, this study aims to develop and assess a research model of the relationship between job dissatisfaction and brand sabotage behavior (BSB) based on the moderating mechanism of psychological resources (i.e. brand-based role identity and relational energy). The interdependence between these influencing factors is analyzed from the perspective of social science holism.

A total of 381 valid questionnaires were collected from frontliners serving in full-service restaurants in Guangzhou, China. Regression analysis was used to test the research hypotheses and combined with fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to identify the complex triggering mechanism of BSB.

Job dissatisfaction is positively related to BSB, brand-based role identity internalization and relational energy weaken this effect, whereas brand-based role identity compliance strengthens it. Qualitative comparative analysis shows that a single condition does not constitute a necessary condition for BSB. The interdependence of job dissatisfaction and employee psychological resources forms multiple asymmetric paths that trigger high and low BSB.

The findings can be used by catering organizations as guidelines for conducting training for brand internalization, formulating strategies to avoid BSB among employees and strengthening brand building.

This study is the first to integrate COR and complexity theories to comprehensively analyze how BSB is formed among dissatisfied employees. The authors advance theory by distinguishing the role of brand psychological resources (i.e. brand-based role identity) and psychological resources obtained from the environment (i.e. relational energy) in stimulating or buffering dissatisfied employees to engage in BSB.

The paper aims to clarify the relationship between organisational structures and individual brand supporting behaviour. It proposes modelling the social transformation process and outlining why and how leadership is important throughout the internal brand building process. The study aims to expand the domain of corporate branding by including a broader range of human resource and leadership‐related aspects than is normally found in the branding literature.

The paper opted for an exploratory study using the open‐ended approach of grounded theory, including 30 depth interviews and one expert group discussion with employees representing middle and senior management having mainly a marketing and corporate communications background. The data were complemented by documentary analysis, including brand documents, descriptions of internal processes, and copies of employee magazine articles.

The paper provides empirical insights about how change is brought about during internal brand building. It suggests that successful leaders act as “integrating forces” on two levels: integrating the elements of corporate identity structures, and mediating between the corporate branding structures and the individual.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

The paper includes implications for the development of a powerful brand image, the development of “brand ambassadors” and for managing the balance between stability and change.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how brand‐supportive behaviour can be enabled.

Environmental changes require higher levels of corporate authenticity when communicating with stakeholders. This is achieved by a congruence of stakeholder and brand identities. Focusing on employee identity, the purpose of this paper is to explain relationships of factors predicting brand‐building behavior.

The study pursues a triangulation approach, applying case study and survey as research methods and telephone interviews and questionnaires as research techniques in the respective exploratory and explanatory research stages.

Confirmed by exploratory and explanatory research, the antecedent factors of behavioral branding have been elicited. Interestingly, marketing control reflected differentiated results compared to previous research. It showed the highest level of contribution to explain R square followed by role identity salience and value congruence. This factor also had the highest correlation value.

Additional qualitative and quantitative research with increased sample size is suggested to validate the findings in diverse cross‐cultural research settings.

The findings enable global marketing managers to more effectively relate to stakeholders by a holistic, empathetic and authentic corporate branding strategy execution.

The interdisciplinary study validates and further develops recent pioneering research by using different measurements, scales and sample scopes. This multidisciplinary research delineates innovative and integrated conceptualizations on corporate branding, identity and leadership and supports the call to upgrade the branding concept within the marketing discipline.

The purpose of this paper is to answer the question of how brand-specific transformational leadership (TFL) and transactional leadership (TRL) enhance employee-based brand equity (EBBE) by influencing employees’ perceived brand value congruence (EPBVC).

This study employed hierarchical linear modeling and chose moderating variables that are primarily related to the working environment: person–job fit (PJF) and person–group fit (PGF). The sample included managers and employees of the largest domestic bank in Taiwan.

Questionnaires were distributed to banking staff in the service industry. The results imply that both brand-specific TFL and brand-specific TRL require the mediation of PJF and PGF to influence EBBE, which then influences brand equity. Without these mediators, brand-specific TFL and brand-specific TRL have no effects on EBBE.

Compared to the results from other studies, these results imply a unique discovery that both brand-specific TFL and brand-specific TRL require the mediation of PJF and PGF to influence EPBVC, which in turn influences EBBE. Without these mediators, brand-specific TFL and brand-specific TRL do not have any effects.

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the complex consumer brand relationships by holistically exploring the dynamics between brand love and co-creation, how they are impacted by behavioural branding and their combined impact to brand loyalty.

This is a conceptual paper, based on extensive and thorough literature review on the fields of brand love, behavioural branding, brand communities and co-creation, that leads to the formulation of a proposed synthesized framework.

The authors propose that consumers experiencing brand love are more willing to engage in an active co-creating behaviour in the context of a brand community, especially when brand representatives vividly communicate the brand values and motivate consumers to engage. This process is moderated by the product/service category and level of customer involvement with it, and it produces a combined positive impact on brand loyalty.

The proposed conceptual framework needs to be validated through empirical research. However, even at this initial stage, it may have a significant impact, especially as it highlights the role of brand representatives and how they could drastically moderate the relationship between the brand and the consumer.

This is the first attempt to incorporate the constructs that are significant to the consumer–brand relationship research stream in one conceptual framework. The synthesis of these concepts will contribute to the improved understanding of the consumer–brand relationship, and its dynamics and will equip managers with a novel approach to the central role of behavioural branding.

The concept of employee-based brand equity (EBBE) has been the center of scholars' attention in the field of marketing and brand management. The brand is one of the most valuable intangible assets of any organization. This research is a novel step in examining the brand-specific transactional leadership role in implementing the new approach of brand-building behaviors (BBBs) and EBBE.

The statistical population of the current study is employees of five major insurance companies in Semnan city of Iran. Using the classified random sampling method, 136 employees of these insurance firms were chosen. Likert-based questionnaires were used to collect data. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze research data.

Findings show that brand-specific transactional leadership affects participation and retention positively and significantly. Also, the variables of participation, in-role brand-building behavior (IRBBB) and retention, have a positive and significant effect on the EBBE. However, no significant relationship has been found between brand-specific transactional leadership and the IRBBB.

The study was bound by access to firms and managers' availability. On the other hand, this research is a cross-sectional study, and its data have been collected in a certain period of time, while longitudinal research can provide a richer result. Future research can benefit from the impact of brand-specific transactional leadership and brand evangelism.

When selecting brand leaders, manager training programs need to evaluate whether a candidate has brand-specific transactional leadership traits that will enhance the successful internalization of brand values and improve EBBE.

Brand-specific transactional leadership increases employee responsibility and a greater desire to engage in citizenship behaviors. In addition, using partnerships to influence customer supportive behaviors creates a good image of the company and its services in the minds of customers. Also, this research is a novel step in examining the brand-specific transactional leadership role in implementing the new approach of BBBs and EBBE.

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.

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.