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This study aims to quantitatively consolidate the research conducted over the past four decades on how internal branding activities drive employee commitment. It summarizes several operationalizations of internal branding and tests the moderating effect of employee’s personal characteristics and job characteristics on the relationship between internal branding and employee commitment.

This paper uses meta-analysis as the research methodology. The analysis includes a sample of 65 studies (from 62 published works), yielding 226 effect sizes (coded into 82 composite effect sizes) over an aggregated sample of 21,706 respondents.

This study finds that brand communication, brand-centered human resource management (HRM), training and development, organizational support and culture, brand-centered leadership and an excellent reward system are the key operationalizations of internal branding. Furthermore, employee’s personal (education, age and gender) and job (tenure, work status and level of customer orientation) characteristics significantly moderate the internal branding–employee commitment relationship.

Limited empirical literature on some of the internal branding operationalizations such as brand-centered HRM and rewards has curbed the scope of moderator analysis.

This paper proposes some effective ways of implementing internal branding strategies and provides support for boundary conditions that brand managers should consider to strengthen the impact of internal branding activities on employee commitment.

As per the authors’ knowledge, this paper is among the few quantitative consolidations of four decades of research on the internal branding–employee commitment relationship.

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.

Relying on social identity and social exchange perspectives, the present study aims to investigate the role of employee branding dimensions in stimulating employees’ brand citizenship behaviour (BCB) directly and indirectly through job satisfaction and affective brand commitment.

A field-survey method was used to target customer-contact employees of luxury chain hotels. Regression-based approach and bootstrap method (via PROCESS MACRO, Model 6) were applied to test the direct and indirect effects.

The results show that perceived external brand prestige has a strong direct effect on BCB. Through mediation analysis, this study observes that job satisfaction and affective brand commitment have significant mediation effects (i.e. individual, parallel and sequential) between employee branding dimensions and BCB. Analysing the results precisely, job satisfaction and affective brand commitment have the lowest sequential mediation effect and the greatest parallel mediation effect concerning the said relationships.

This study is novel in applying a three-path mediation model in the Indian hospitality context, considering a multi-dimensional perspective of employee branding to capture its diverse impact on BCB directly and indirectly through job satisfaction and affective brand commitment. Moreover, this study advances employee branding research by considering the under-investigated mediating (individual, parallel and sequential) role of job satisfaction and affective brand commitment.

This study aims to develop comprehensive definitions, conceptualizations and measures of four internal brand management (IBM) outcomes, namely, brand understanding, brand identification, brand commitment and brand citizenship behaviour (BCB). In doing so, it also aims to propose a model, which considers the relationships across these outcomes.

Data were collected via an online survey of 375 employees who work in service organizations, sourced from an Australian, Web-based market research list.

In addition to the indirect effect of brand understanding on BCB via affective IBM outcomes (i.e. brand identification and brand commitment), the study exposes a direct effect of brand understanding on BCB. Therefore, the study shows that BCB is affected by cognitive and affective antecedents.

Because this study focuses on IBM outcomes, future studies could propose and test relevant antecedents and moderators. As the empirical basis of this study comes primarily from the tourism and hospitality industry in one domestic market, the study should be replicated in other industries and countries to ensure the generalizability of the identified relationships.

This study not only delivers IBM outcome measures but also empirically validates that employees’ understanding of the brand is a foundation for affective and behavioural IBM outcomes. Therefore, managers, especially in service organizations, should provide sufficient IBM practices to enable such brand understanding.

This study contributes to IBM literature by developing comprehensive definitions, conceptualizations and measures of four important IBM outcomes. This study is the first to include brand understanding, brand identification, brand commitment and BCB simultaneously.

Taking an evidence from social exchange theory, this research examines the mediating role of affective commitment in the correlation between internal branding, employee engagement and job satisfaction. The moderating role of work environment on the link between internal branding and affective commitment is also studied in this research.

The data were collected by using well-structured research measures from 215 employees working in the BPO sector of India (Punjab and Chandigarh). The hypotheses were developed, and the conceptual model was validated by applying structural equation modeling. The data were analyzed by using two statistical packages, namely SPSS and AMOS.

The findings suggest that internal branding has a significant positive relationship with employee engagement, job satisfaction and affective commitment. The mediating effect of affective commitment on the relationship between internal branding and employee engagement was full, whereas on the relationship between internal branding and job satisfaction, it was partial. Work environment also moderated the relationship of internal branding with affective commitment.

The current study offers significant lessons to management thinkers, human resource (HR), organizational branding and marketing manager. However, BPO sector should be aware about the critical role played by internal branding to enhance affective commitment, employee engagement and job satisfaction of the employees. The role of affective commitment is also taken into account to study the effect of internal branding on employee engagement and employee's job satisfaction. For itself, internal branding cannot be considered as in isolation and is doubtful to be efficacious if the work environment is not encouraging to an employee as well as to the brand values.

This study offers significant lessons to management thinkers, HR, organizational branding and marketing manager. However, BPO sector should be aware about the critical role played by internal branding to enhance employee engagement, job satisfaction and affective commitment of the employees. An important role of affective commitment is also taken into account to study the effect of internal branding on employee engagement and employee's job satisfaction. For itself, internal branding cannot be considered as in isolation and is doubtful to be efficacious if employees are not provided an encouraging work environment.

Existing researches on internal branding are theoretical in nature and overlook the empirical impact of internal branding on employee engagement, job satisfaction and affective commitment from the BPO employees' perspective. The study also offers an empirical examination of potential mediator and moderator for internal branding.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether both perceived sustainable organizational and supervisor support, which represent a sustainable human resource management (HRM) approach, can induce commitment to the employer brand.

This study includes a diverse sample of 3,016 employees drawn from various German organizations. To test the developed hypotheses, a structural model that included all the hypothesized effects was built, using Mplus 7.

Perceived sustainable supervisor support (PSSS) has a direct effect on brand commitment, whereas perceived sustainable organizational support (PSOS) only generates brand commitment indirectly, mediated by brand prestige, brand distinctiveness, and brand trust. The findings further underline that, compared with PSOS, PSSS has a stronger impact on trust in respect of the employer brand.

By considering current employees and their commitment to the employer brand, this study takes an insider view and sheds new light on how an employer brand based on sustainable HRM can achieve commitment, as well as how several mediators affect this link.

This paper aims to study the effect of internal branding on brand supporting behaviour (in-role and extra-role) of bank employees in Egypt. It proposes a model which examines the relationship between internal branding and employees’ brand supporting behavior, mediated by employees’ role clarity, affective commitment and continuance commitment, to provide insights into the way in which employees can become brand champions.

A single cross-sectional descriptive research was employed. A questionnaire was used to collect data from 400 frontline bank employees. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the validity of the scales, and structural equation modelling was used to test the research hypotheses.

The results showed that internal branding did not have a direct significant impact on employees’ in-role and extra-role behaviour. However, that impact only took place through employees’ role clarity and their affective commitment.

The findings suggest that banks can differentiate their offers and build powerful corporate brands through their employees’ brand supporting behaviour. Therefore, bank managers need to consider internal branding within the context of a corporate marketing orientation. Moreover, enhancing employees’ role clarity and affective commitment will ensure sustainable brand supporting behaviour.

This research is the first quantitative study to examine the impact of role clarity and continuance commitment as possible mediators to the proposed relationship. It further adds up to the internal branding literature, which is mostly qualitative or conceptual and thus suffers from limited conclusive evidence in terms of internal branding benefits and practical implications.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between internal branding (IB) and employees' brand commitment and analyze how transformational leadership (TFL) moderates this relationship.

Data were collected through structured questionnaires from 394 employees in Indian telecommunication sector. The hypotheses and conceptual model were tested by structural equation modeling (SEM), using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS).

The results suggest that employees' brand commitment is higher when organizations implement IB supported by transformational leaders. Results also indicate that impact of IB on affective commitment (AC) and normative commitment (NC) is greater than its impact on continuance commitment (CC).

Consistent with the brand commitment dimensions, the findings present an empirically tested comprehensive and integrative model of IB moderated by TFL. This study provides scholars a deeper understanding of relationship among IB, employee's commitment and TFL. Though multicollinearity is addressed, presence of cross-sectional data is a limitation in the study.

The study would help practicing managers to gain a new perspective to manage their internal brand mechanisms through TFL style by stimulating change among employees and create emotionally committed brand advocates.

This paper suggests an empirically validated framework of IB tested for moderation effect by TFL. It adds value to literature by reinforcing the effect of IB employees' AC and NC, especially among customer contact employees who represent brand during customer service delivery in telecommunication sector.

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.

The aims of this article are to measure the brand equity of service firms (luxury hotels) using a customer perspective, to identify factors that predict customers’ brands relationships and to explore the links between service brand equity and employee brand commitment

Two surveys were conducted to achieve the research objectives. The first survey objective was to measure brand equity using a sample of 250 international customers of five‐star hotels in Bangkok. The second survey objective was to collect information regarding employee brand commitment in each selected hotel using a sample of 250 employees.

Results show that hotels belonging to the same category have different brand equity and that brand differentiation and brand trust are the variables that have the major influence on customer brand relationships. Perceived service quality and associations related to hotel core services are not related to brand relationships. High hotel brands equity have a stronger level of employee brand commitment that low hotel brands equity.

For hotel managers the research findings illustrate the importance of brand differentiation and trust for international hotels chains and illustrate the importance of employee brand commitment in the process of building a strong band. Therefore this research has an implication not only for marketing but also for human resource managers and for hotel general managers.

The value of this research resides in the exploration between service brand equity and employee brand commitment. The literature on service marketing emphasizes the link between employee and service quality but to the authors' knowledge little research has explored the link between the service brand and its employees.