Internal brand co-creation: the experiential brand meaning cycle in higher education

Higher education (HE) institutions need to adapt to the global environment but the complex nature of HE highlights the role of marketing and the internal market in realizing the brand identity, creating a challenge for developing a shared brand meaning. This research explores how employees co-create brand meaning through their brand experiences and social interactions with management, colleagues and customers. Using a phenomenological approach, the findings highlight that brand meaning commences from historical, superficial brand interactions. Employees then develop brand meaning further through a series of brand interactions and social interactions. Bridging the internal branding and the co-creation literature, this study conceptualizes the evolving, co-created nature of employees' brand meaning in the experiential brand meaning cycle. This study extends Iglesias and Bonet's (2012) work and illustrates the function of employees as readers and authors of brand meaning, emphasizing the crucial role of brand co-creation in guiding employees' brand promise delivery

Exploring how young consumers processing snack packaging cues from a phenomenological perspective

Obesity has become one of the most significant nutritional problems facing global populations. In the UK, the obesity rates have been on a steady rise, with young adults aged 16-24 being subject to a high risk of becoming obese (Mintel, 2013). This age group displays weaker attitudes towards healthy living than elderly people, and a strong tendency towards snacking. Kerr et al. (2008) observes an increase in snacking, snacking portions, and snacking frequency. Crisps and chocolate are some of the major energy-dense snacks that cause obesity (Astrup et al., 2006), when coupling with over consumption and lack of physical activity. One of the interventions implemented by policy makers in an attempt to encourage consumers to adopt healthy dietary choices is nutrition labelling (NL). The UK was one of the main instigators of the development of nutrition labelling within the European Community (Shine et al., 1997)

An interpretive enquiry into CEO personal branding on social media

Social media has altered the corporate communication environment. Organisations have put their CEOs on social media to build corporate brand image whilst creating a strong personal brand. However, creating a personal brand online is complicated and problematic, especially when the personal brand serves various stakeholders. While CEOs become recognised as a brand, there has been limited insight into how a CEO personal brand can be crafted and how it impacts stakeholders. Furthermore, CEOs are regarded as a core presentation of the corporate brand. Thus, it is important to understand how CEO personal brand affects the corporate brand. To address these questions, this study adopted a multi-method research, combining qualitative in-depth interviews with netnography, in an attempt to gain understanding of CEO personal brand from both CEOs’ and stakeholders’ perspectives. The findings indicate key CEO characteristics and employee involvement as pre-requisite to developing a CEO personal brand. Also, by bridging corporate branding and online personal branding literature, this study illustrates how a CEO personal brand influences corporate brand image, employee advocacy and consumer loyalty

Millennial Chinese Consumers’ Perceived Destination Brand Value

There has been a substantial rise in the number of Chinese tourists, with the Chinese millennials being important influencers. Yet very little is known about their tourism behavior, particularly how their perceived destination brand values influence their destination loyalty. This study brings in the consumers’ perceived brand value concept from the branding literature to investigate Chinese millennial tourists’ destination loyalty. An online survey was adopted to collect data from 287 Chinese millennial tourists. The findings offer insight into the relative effects of five dimensions of tourists’ perceived destination brand values on their destination loyalty. The findings also extend existing tourism literature, showing the moderating effects of destination brand globality, destination status (domestic vs. international) and national brand attitude on the said relationships. Managerial implications to better target Chinese millennials are discussed together with future research directions

A brand within a brand: an integrated understanding of internal brand management and brand architecture in the public sector

Branding in the public sector is emerging as an interesting area of research, as diverse organisations find themselves using branding principles to promote a consistent, clear brand. However, very little is known how public organisations could, or should, manage their brands. The purpose of this research, therefore, is to explore brand management processes in the public sector, and its implication for brand architecture, from an employee perspective. With a qualitative approach, the study argues that branding is important not only for the organisation, but also for individual departments. Further, unlike branding in the private sector, public organisations may be more concerned with supporting a positive perception and organisational attractiveness rather than a unique and differentiated brand. This may have implications for brand architecture. By allowing individual departments to manage their brand with support from organisational structures that provide alignment and focus, organisations can form a brand architecture that supports a strong organisational brand and employee brand commitment

Internal branding as a tool to ensure the employees' brand promise delivery

The purpose of this paper is to understand the internal branding process from the perspective of service providers in Thailand. It will reveal the key internal branding mechanisms and empirically assess the relationship between internal branding and employees' brand attitudes and performance

Internal branding process: Key mechanisms, outcomes and moderating factors

Purpose: This study seeks to focus on front-line service employees and their views of internal branding and the extent to which personal and job-specific factors impact on the success of internal branding in the reinforcement of brand identification and brand loyalty among service employees. Design/methodology/approach: The research, based on a multiple case study representing the hotel industry in Thailand, involved the completion of 30 in-depth qualitative interviews with customer-interface employees followed by a quantitative survey with 680 customer-interface employees located in five major hotels. Findings: Corporate service brands need to coordinate internal branding activity to enhance their employees' identification with, commitment to, and loyalty to, the brand. The relationships between the concepts of identification, commitment and loyalty of employees are determined. Personal variables such as age, education, and length of service as well as situational factors regarding their work environment are found to have moderating effects on the effectiveness of the internal branding process. Practical implications: The paper highlights the importance of internal branding on employees' brand identification, commitment and loyalty. However, management should also be aware that the impact of internal branding would not be constant across all employees within an organisation. Personal variables such as age, educational background, and length of service with the brand should also be taken into account. The impact of internal branding on an employee's attitudes and behaviour are heightened when employees are satisfied with their workplace. As such, internal branding cannot be looked at in isolation and is unlikely to be successful if the work environment is not conducive to the employees and the brand values. Originality/value: Much of the work on internal branding is conceptual and based on small-scale studies undertaken with management or consultants. This paper provides empirical evidence from the front-line service employees' perspective on the relationships between internal branding and brand identification, brand commitment, brand loyalty and brand performance. It also provides an empirical investigation of potential moderators for internal branding. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Brand value co-creation with employees through the Leader-Member Exchange theory: the case of a corporate brand

Research Purpose: Employees, who are at the interface between customers and brands, play a crucial role in shaping consumers’ brand experiences that facilitate subjective and psychological meaning processes (Gambetti and Graffigna, 2015; Prahaland and Ramaswamy, 2004). The role of employees has been made more important as corporate branding involves multiple stakeholders who interact with employees across an organisation, whose behaviours influence and shape brand experiences of those stakeholders through their social interactions within the network. Hence, involving employees in brand value co-creation in the first instance could lead to positive brand experiences in different brand-stakeholder encounters