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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.

This study aims to show that brand success can be improved if the brand promise that is communicated through mass media campaigns is lived up to by each employee of a company. The paper terms such brand consistent employee behaviour behavioural branding and identifies managerial instruments for its implementation and management.

The model in the paper explains the brand's contribution to company success by brand consistent employee behaviour, functional employee performance and brand congruent mass media communication. Brand consistent employee behaviour and functional employee performance in turn are modelled as determined by formal and informal management techniques as well as employee empowerment. The model is tested on a sample of 167 senior managers using partial least squares and finds empirical support. Furthermore, practical implications are provided based on additional top management focus groups.

The paper finds that behavioural branding determines the brand's contribution to company success. Further, the results show that informal management and employee empowerment have a far stronger impact on the brand consistency of employee behaviour than formal management instruments.

Managers should spend more time explaining and discussing targets of behavioural branding, and they should create an organisational environment that enables employees to find their own individual ways of articulating a brand to customers.

The framework in the paper integrates personal and non‐personal facets of interaction for a holistic explanation of brand performance. It provides a broader understanding of factors affecting the accruement of a customer's brand experience and enables researchers and practitioners to develop more consistent and promising brand management activities.

This research aims to investigate the relationship between employer branding and its antecedent organisational culture within the context of the private banking sector. The study also investigates the relationship between employer branding and employee brand equity as a consequential construct. Additionally, the mediating role of trust and the moderating role of gender in the relationship between employer branding and employee brand equity has been examined.

The present study’s findings result from data analysis collected from a sample of 454 employees working in private banks in India. The data analysis was conducted utilising the structural equation modelling technique with the assistance of analysis of moment structures (AMOS) software.

The study’s findings indicate that supportive and bureaucratic (formal) culture in private banks exhibit a significant relationship with employer branding. However, the relationship between innovative culture and employer branding was found to be insignificant. The research also reveals a significant positive association between employer branding and employee brand equity variables: brand consistent behaviour, brand endorsement and brand allegiance. Further, the study highlights the mediating role of employee trust in management in the relationship between employer branding and employee brand equity. Examining demographic variables suggests that gender moderates the relationship between employer branding and employee brand equity.

The originality of this study lies in its exploration of the critical role of organisational culture variables in shaping employer branding within the context of private banks. The findings highlight that cultivating supportive and bureaucratic cultures can effectively enhance the employer branding of private banks. The study emphasises the outcomes of employer branding initiatives, signifying that they contribute to developing brand equity among employees. This leads to long-term employee commitment and advocacy towards the organisation, as employees become brand advocates for the bank with which they are affiliated. The study contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between organisational culture, employer branding and employee brand equity, providing valuable implications for the private banking sector aiming to reinforce their employer brand and increase employee engagement.

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.

This study aims to explore how the adoption of internal market orientation (IMO) can enhance front-line employee brand enactment within an interpersonal service setting. Insights from equity theory and the person – environment paradigm are drawn upon to develop a theoretical model describing the impact of IMO on employee – organization fit, employee – supervisor fit and employee – job fit and the consequences of IMO on employee brand knowledge and brand identification. Second, the role of various types of fit and brand knowledge/identification for front-line employee brand enactment is confirmed.

This study draws from service employees in a high-contact customer setting.

Results uncover two mechanisms for successful internal branding: increasing employee fit with the service environment and enhancing employee brand knowledge.

The study contributes to practice in that the findings outline a realistic understanding of how managerial actions facilitate employees’ alignment with the firm’s brand promise within the realm of the broader organizational context in which service delivery takes place.

The present study contributes in the extant literature as it enables a more holistic view of the drivers of brand-congruent behaviors among front-line employees. Moreover, it has a significant contribution for future researchers as it lays the ground to further examine how employees’ perceptions of internal marketing strategies shape their fit levels with different aspects of their working environment which also affect the internal branding efforts of service organizations.

In consideration that the purpose of talent management is to attract and nurture productive employees for the benefit of the hospitality organization, this study aims to examine why employees respond in such favorable ways. Recognizing beneficial employee behavior advances a hospitality organization through their ability to deliver an experience that aligns with the promoted brand promise, inspiration is drawn from both the strategic human resource management as well as the internal brand management literature. The power of this approach is illustrated through a survey of employees of a Latin American restaurant chain with a long-standing policy of values-based recruiting, inclusive talent management and progressive people management practices.

Informed by literature, employee perception of their relationship with the organization (i.e., relationship orientation) and alignment with the brand’s values (i.e., brand fit) were considered drivers of favorable employee attitudes and behavior as a result of hospitality talent management practices. These were hypothesized to positively influence employee confidence and motivation as reflected in organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) and brand motivation, which in turn drive employee brand-aligned behavior. A survey measured the variables of interest with the same employees over two time periods, matched using employees’ identification code, resulting in 199 complete surveys. The structural model was estimated using partial least squares (PLS).

Relationship orientation and brand fit were significant drivers of OBSE and brand motivation, respectively. In turn, they had a significant effect on employee brand-aligned behavior. Model estimation complied with all PLS quality criteria.

Traditional talent management practices that tend to focus on the transactional benefits of the job/career can be strengthened by leveraging strong organizational relationships as well as engagement with the hospitality brand. In turn, employees have the confidence and motivation to exhibit brand-aligned behavior, a path to competitive advantage, which may also act as a buffer helping employees manage the stress of hospitality jobs.

Understanding why employees respond favorably to hospitality talent management practices, beyond simply transactional, monetary reasons, is important to designing relevant and timely initiatives that have the potential to enhance organizational performance.

Internal branding efforts are essential in improving employee performance in services marketing. Drawing on reformulation of attitude theory, this paper aims to contribute to the internal branding literature by positing that while internal brand knowledge (IBK) is essential for transforming brand vision into brand reality, it is not brand knowledge per se but its integration with other brand- and customer-related aspects that drive superior employee performance. In particular, this paper develops a cognitive-affective-behaviour model of internal branding proposing that IBK results in higher levels of employee brand identification (EBI); this sense of identification then motivates employees to engage in both employee-related and brand- and customer-focussed behaviours (i.e. brand citizenship behaviour [BCB] and customer-oriented behaviour [COB]), which in turn foster employee performance.

The hypotheses were empirically tested using a sample of 697 from services industry in Vietnam.

The findings indicate a sequential mediation model in that employee brand knowledge affects employee performance (both objective and subjective measures) through EBI, BCB and COB. Employee brand knowledge results in higher levels of EBI; this sense of identification then motivates employees to engage in employee-related brand and customer-focussed behaviours (BCB and COB), which in turn foster employee performance.

Firms should understand that IBK may not directly result in high levels of service performance, and instead should embrace the culture of self-driven positive brand-connection attitudes that motivate employees to engage in BCB and COB that are consistent with their sense of self.

This study makes a unique contribution to the internal branding literature by unravelling a pathway that integrates employees’ self-related psychological mechanism (EBI) and employee-related brand and customer-focussed behaviours (BCB and COB) through which employee brand knowledge is converted into employee performance.

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.

Numerous service organizations involve employees in strengthening customer relationships. While the literature has emphasized the importance of a sustainable market orientation (SMO) for an organization’s image, it has not explored how employees’ behavior in sustainable service organizations influences the reputational effect. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of SMO-aligned employee behavior on customer attitude and behavior, while considering different SMOs and the role of value-based brand choice.

The authors conducted a 2 (SMO-aligned vs nonaligned) × 3 (social, environmental or economic SMOs) between-subject, scenario-based experiment with 313 participants to test the hypotheses. A moderated mediation analysis was also conducted.

The results show that SMO-aligned employee behavior has a positive impact on customers’ trust in contrast with SMO-nonaligned behavior independent of the SMO. The relationship between employee behavior and customer word-of-mouth is mediated by trust. Furthermore, the effect on trust is moderated by value-based brand choice.

This study contributes to employee behavior research by examining the impact of SMO-aligned employee behavior on customer outcomes in sustainable service organizations. Adding to previous research on employee behavior, it further considers the impact of value-based brand choice.