Antecedents of Internal Brand Management Outcomes--Conceptual Model and Empirical Validation

摘要

Because employees are important for building and maintaining brand-customer relationships, managing employee behavior applying internal brand management (IBM) becomes a critical success factor in brand management. In pursuit of brand consistent employee behavior affective and cognitive IBM outcomes have been promoted in literature. From a managerial perspective antecedents of IBM outcomes have to be focus of further research. Therefore, this study's aim is to develop a conceptual model of antecedents of IBM outcomes. The model contains the behavioral IBM outcome of brand citizenship behavior, the affective IBM outcome of brand commitment as well as the rarely investigated cognitive IBM outcome of brand understanding. Internal communication usage, role modeling of management, and operationalization of brand identity are considered as antecedents of the three IBM outcomes.