Internal corporate branding impact on employees’ brand supporting behaviour
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-03-2016-1112 |
| Date | 12 February 2018 |
| Published date | 12 February 2018 |
| Pages | 79-95 |
| Author | Sally Raouf Ragheb Garas,Amira Fouad Ahmed Mahran,Hassan Mohamed Hussein Mohamed |
| Subject Matter | Marketing,Product management,Brand management/equity |
Internal corporate branding impact on
employees’brand supporting behaviour
Sally Raouf Ragheb Garas
Pharos University in Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt, and
Amira Fouad Ahmed Mahran and Hassan Mohamed Hussein Mohamed
Cairo University, Giza, Egypt
Abstract
Purpose –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 empl oyees can become brand
champions.
Design/methodology/approach –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.
Findings –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.
Practical implications –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 beha viour.
Originality/value –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.
Keywords Banking, Internal branding, Brand performance, Corporate brands, Brand supporting behaviour
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The intense competition nowadays has made customers
approach many mature products as commodities (Ferrell and
Hartline,2008). More companies are now facedwith difficulties
in differentiatingtheir offers, especiallyservice companies where
managers find themselves challenged by the intangibility,
inseparability and variability of services (Wallace and de
Charnatony, 2009). However, service variability can be
considered as both “acureandacurse”forthe service company
(Zeithaml and Bitner, 2003): a cure, because it can be used in
differentiating organisational associations, building strong
corporate brands and winning competition; a curse, due to the
difficulties of branding intan gible offers (Aaker, 2004;
Papasolomouand Vrontis, 2006).
Generally, organisational associations define any corporate
brand, associations in terms of its heritage, ability to deliver
customer value, employees, brand values (priorities) and
performance records (Aaker, 2004). More specifically,
corporate brands can be viewed as a group of functional and
emotional benefits (Balmer, 2001). In today’s competitive
environment, providing functional benefits only (e.g. self-
service technology) is no longer a source of sustainable
competitive advantage; hence, organisations tend to focus on
the emotional benefits of their value propositions, such as
employees’skills, knowledge, interactivity and on-going
relationships. These benefits are derived from the buying
experience (Aaker, 2004;Balmer, 1995;Harris and de
Chernatony, 2001;King and Grace, 2010). Consequently,
employees are considered the foundation of the corporate
brand (Aaker, 2004). In fact, they are the service brand
(Wallace and de Charnatony, 2009), as they have a major role
in translating the corporateidentity, in the short run, into image
and, in the long run, into reputation (Balmer, 2013;
Halliburton and Bach, 2012). Alternatively, they can reduce
the credibility of the advertised messageif their behaviour does
not reinforce thecommunicated corporate brand values (Harris
and de Chernatony,2001).
Admittedly, corporate branding literature, from earlyon, has
shed light on the essential role that employees play in corporate
brand building (King, 1991, cited in Balmer, 2002).Moreover,
during the 1980s and 1990s, when service companies started
using brand management practices (Knox, 2004), literature
recognised the importance of service personnel in delivering
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on
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Journal of Product & Brand Management
27/1 (2018) 79–95
© Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 1061-0421]
[DOI 10.1108/JPBM-03-2016-1112]
79
services, differentiating offers and reducing the risk of these
services being perceived as commodities (Balmer, 2001;Harris
and de Chernatony, 2001;Papasolomou and Vrontis, 2006).
More specifically,it stressed the need to consider employees as
“brand ambassadors”(Harris and de Chernatony, 2001), the
importance of employees’commitment and the importance of
consistency of the product/services performance in delivering
the brand promise (Balmer, 2010). However, people are not
alike; thus,customers may have to interact with differentservice
personnel whose attitudes and behaviours may vary.
Consequently, two gaps may result: first, the communication
gap, which represents the difference between promised and
actual service. This gap can be handled by internal marketing
techniques that enables employees to deliver the service brand
promises through complex strategies that involve hiring the
right people, developing people to deliver quality service,
providing the needed support systems and retaining the best
people (Zeithaml et al.,2009). In fact, previous research
indicates that internal marketing significantly enhances extra-
role behaviour of employees (SeyedJavadin et al.,2012). The
second is the service performance gap, which represents the
differencebetween service standards and actualservice. Factors
leading to this gap include employees who are untrained,
unwillingor unable to meet the servicestandards because of role
ambiguity, role conflict and/or inappropriate compensation or
recognition (Zeithaml et al.,2009). These employees are not
likelyto be consistent in fulfilling the corporatebrand promise.
Therefore, to ensure that all the service employees
consistently build and maintain the desired corporate brand
image, internal brand management/employee branding/
internal branding has become of great importance in both the
practice and the literature (Punjaisri et al.,2008). Internal
branding is the term that is used throughout this research. In
fact, turning employees into “brandchampions”is the result of
successful internal branding, which is a tool for influencing
employees to fulfil the external brand promiseby ensuring that
they transform the corporate brand values into reality when
fulfilling the brand promise (Punjaisri et al.,2009). This is
simply achievedby meeting service standards.
Consequently, it may be argued that internal branding can be
used to address the service performance gap. This notion was
tackled by Punjaisri and Wilson (2011), who examined the
impact of internal branding (via training and internal
communications) on employees’in-role brand behaviour.
However, they did not study role clarity as a possible mediator,
although role ambiguity (lack of clarity) is a factor in creating the
service performance gap. Whereas, King (2010) examined the
impact of knowledge dissemination (internal communications
and training) on role clarity and employees’affective
commitment and the consequent impact on extra-role brand
behaviour without examining possible direct relationships
between knowledge dissemination, extra-role and in-role
behaviour. Hence, to fill this research gap, the current research
examines the direct impact of internal branding on in-role and
extra-role brand behaviour of employees (the two forms of brand
supporting behaviour) as well as the indirect impact of it on
behaviour through employees’role clarity and their affective
commitment.
Additionally, it is worth notingthat the context of the current
study is retail banking in Egypt, which has become more
important and competitive after the banking reform
programme (Central Bank of Egypt, 2015;MENA value
partners Newsletter, 2010). Furthermore, while banks
generally offer a number of high involvement products, the
focal brand is often the corporate brand (Lohndorf and
Diamantopoulos, 2014;Wallace and de Charnatony, 2009).
Thus, differentiatingthe banking offers depends on the way the
employees provide the service (Papasolomou and Vrontis,
2006;Wallace and de Charnatony, 2009). Therefore, it is also
essential to examine the impact of internal branding on
bank employees’behaviourthrough continuance commitment,
especially that little quantitative work on internal branding
exists and the majority of the previous studies examine the
relationship between internal branding and affective
commitment (King, 2010;King and Grace, 2012;Moawad,
2012) without investigating its relationship with continuance
commitment. As a consequence, the directionand significance
of the relationship between these two constructs are unclear
despite its importance.
This ambiguity is partly because continuance commitment
has for long been considered as a quality that hinders personal
adaptability, and hence as a negative aspect of an organisation
(Suliman and Iles, 2000). This premise is empirically
supported. For example, some studies show that continuance
commitment has a significant negative impact on in-role
behaviour (Huang et al., 2012) and on extra-role behaviour
(Gautam et al.,2005), whereas others indicate that it is neither
related to in-role behaviour(Chen and Francesco, 2003)norto
extra-role behaviour (Huang et al., 2012). Furthermore,
Wallace et al. (2013) suggest that high levels of continuance
commitment in retail banking can lead to anti-role (brand
sabotage) behaviour. However, it has been argued, recently,
that continuance commitmentcan be consideredas a “culture-
specific”dimension with an impact on behaviour that is not
necessarily negative (Suliman and Iles, 2000;Wasti, 2002).
More specifically, Suliman and Iles (2000) find that
continuance commitment significantly enhances in-role
behaviour in threeindustrial companies in Jordan. This result is
interesting in that it contradicts the findings of studies set in
other cultures. Therefore, the authors suggest that in Arab
countries where there are high levels of unemployment, weak
labour unions or none, and a collective orientation towards
work, continuance commitment may be considered as a
“positive organisational aspect”. Furthermore, a significant
positive relationship between continuance commitment and
extra-role behaviour of bank employees in an Egyptian city is
reported by El-Masdy (2002). Apart from that study,
continuance commitment in retail banks may be high because
bank employees tend to have greater permanency and higher
pay and rewards than employees of other service sectors
(Wallace et al., 2013).This premise is supported by the findings
of some studies that were conducted in the Egyptian banking
sector, which revealed that the employees’continuance
commitment tends to exceed their affective and normative
commitment (Abu-El-Fadle,2007;Hawas, 2003).
For the aforementioned reasons, the present research
investigates the role of internalbranding in reducing the service
performance gap by proposing that internal branding (whichis
considered one of the internal marketing tools) helps to
transform employees into brand champions, who are
Internal corporate branding impact on employees
Sally Raouf Ragheb Garas et al.
Journal of Product & Brand Management
Volume 27 · Number 1 · 2018 · 79–95
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