Unveiling front-line employees’ brand construal types during corporate brand promise delivery

What is it about?

Marshalling empirical insights from three empirical studies, this work unveils the heterogeneous nature of front- line employees’ (FLEs) corporate brand construals. Our insights contest corporate brand perspectives that assume employees respond to internal branding initiatives in a homogeneous manner. In Study 1, four types of FLEs’ corporate brand construals are identified (i.e. brand enthusiasts, brand conformists, brand deviants, brand skeptics). Study 2a develops and validates the measurement scales of these four types. Through a Bayesian SEM approach, Study 2b reveals the existence of multifaceted cognitive and affective FLEs’ responses to corporate branding initiatives. Our findings substantiate the significance of the social identity theory to both corporate/ internal branding by revealing the link between corporate brand construal and corporate brand identification. In instrumental terms, this typology explains variations in FLEs’ corporate brand promise delivery and renders practitioners more equipped to implement corporate branding initiatives

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Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This work contributes to one of the core dimensions of the corporate marketing mix – the corporate brand covenant, which represents the promise between the corporate brand and its stakeholders (Balmer, 2011). In corporate marketing, FLEs play a crucial role in upholding the corporate brand covenant through building and sustaining a trusted relationship between the organization and its external stakeholders (Balmer, 1995, 1998, 2001b, 2009, 2017a; Balmer, Powell, & Greyser, 2011; Leitch, 2017). Acknowledging this central role of FLEs in nurturing corporate brand covenant, this work’s contribution to corporate brand scholarship