Enhancing Brand Understanding Through Brand Training: a Conditional Process Analysis of Recent Hires at an Airline.
| Autor | Murillo, Enrique |
1 Introduction
Internal branding is a mostly unexplored line of research within the scientific journals indexed by Redalyc. To date, only a conceptual literature review (Sahoo & Mohanty, 2019) and two empirical studies have been published on the subject (Altaf & Shahzad, 2018; Murillo, 2019). The paucity of research in the Latin American region is disappointing, considering that service organizations actually consider internal branding to be very useful, without necessarily using that name, and regularly deploy such practices to train employees regarding their service brand and the promise it makes to customers (Brodie et al., 2009; Pinar et al., 2016). This contrasts with the related yet distinct research streams of internal marketing and employer branding, where numerous studies have been published (e.g. Araque-Jaimes et al., 2017; Cassunde et al., 2014; Farias, 2010; Reis et al., 2018).
Research on internal branding has been centered mostly on the hospitality industry (e.g. Buil et al., 2016; Chung & Byrom, 2021; King, 2010; Punjaisri & Wilson, 2011; Terglav et al., 2016), which has always paid close attention to the customer experience (Kandampully et al., 2018), and the need to create differentiated experiences through careful employee training (Hurrell & Scholarios, 2014). In addition, there have been a few studies in the airline industry (Erkmen & Hancer, 2015; Vatankhah & Darvishi, 2018), financial services (Altaf & Shahzad, 2018; Du Preez & Bendixen, 2015; Garas et al., 2018; Tuominen et al., 2016), public sector organizations (Leijerholt et al., 2022), healthcare (Huang & Lai, 2021), and the retail industry (Itam & Singh, 2017; Murillo, 2020; Porricelli et al., 2014).
Internal branding is not a recent development, as attested by the attention brand training has historically been accorded at such admired companies as Ritz Carlton Hotels (Yeung, 2006), Singapore Airlines (Chong, 2007), and Starbucks (Berry, 2000). What is recent is internal branding research, i.e. the scientific study of the processes that service organizations implement internally to turn their employees into authentic "brand ambassadors" (Xiong et al., 2013). Among these processes, the systematic enhancement of employees' brand understanding through brand training is particularly important, and constitutes the focal relationship examined in this research. In today's saturated consumer markets, a strong brand, when consistently translated into a differentiated customer experience, generates loyalty and word of mouth among customers, thus becoming a source of competitive advantage (Berry & Lampo, 2004).
However, understanding the service brand and its actionable implications for the role it plays when facing customers is not something that employees, particularly recent hires, can achieve with just the standard orientation and initial training. This is because brand understanding contains a large proportion of tacit knowledge, which new employees can only assimilate over time, by developing their individual work experience and judgment. The need for time, and training continuity, has been established by longitudinal studies of the relationship between brand training and brand understanding (Murillo & King, 2019). However, the boundary conditions that shape this key internal branding relationship have not been researched before. Insights about relevant moderating variables would be a timely contribution, because this relationship arguably constitutes the immediate goal of internal branding organizational practices. Although previous studies show this relationship to be positive, a better understanding of moderating effects, linked to individual differences, would have a large practical value for organizations seeking to improve their training of brand ambassadors.
Therefore, the primary objective of this study is to make an incremental contribution to internal branding knowledge by examining three previously untested moderators of the relationship between employee brand training and employee brand understanding, specifically gender, age, and customer-contact position.
2 Literature review and hypotheses
2.1 Internal branding
Recent systematic reviews of the internal branding concept (e.g. Barros-Arrieta & Garcia-Cali, 2021; Saleem & Iglesias, 2016) have pointed out that the literature is fragmented and that numerous definitions have been advanced. This study, in particular, is aligned with the definition by Punjaisri and Wilson (2011, p. 1523): "[...] the activities undertaken by an organization to ensure that the brand promise reflecting the espoused brand values that set customers' expectations is enacted and delivered by employees." Since the first seminal studies (Burmann et al., 2009), internal branding, also known as internal brand management, has taken the position that most service organizations deploy internal branding practices, even without using that name. Top service organizations have historically emphasized rigorous training regimes (e.g. Chong, 2007; Yeung, 2006) to turn new hires into competent brand ambassadors (Jacobs, 2003).
The intentional development of a competent and motivated workforce that can deliver the brand promise to customers during service encounters can form the basis of effective differentiation, i.e. a strong service brand (Berry, 2000; Berry & Lampo, 2004). In the hyper-competitive environment that organizations face today, a strong brand is a proven source of competitive advantage (Barney, 2014; Berry, 2000). This is why successful service organizations have traditionally attached considerable importance to the training and motivation of their employees, so that they are capable and motivated to deliver the brand promise to their customers. These companies use advertising, as well as other promotional initiatives, to generate expectations and make brand promises to consumers (Brodie et al., 2009). However, as the services they offer are made up of intangible benefits or experiences, customers base their brand judgments and verdicts largely on the behavior of customer-contact employees (Grace & O'Cass, 2005; Sirianni et al., 2013).
Internal branding research has provided scientific confirmation of the effectiveness of long standing managerial practice, through the identification of basic constructs (e.g. brand training, brand leadership, brand understanding, brand commitment), and the validation of the key relationships in a nomological network using structural equation modeling (e.g. King & Grace, 2010; Punjaisri & Wilson, 2011; Xiong et al., 2013). However, the important task of testing the boundary conditions of these key relationships has barely started (e.g. Dechawatanapaisal, 2019), and currently represents a gap in internal branding knowledge.
Over the years, internal branding research has systematically identified the various practices that service organizations implement to achieve brand-aligned employee behavior, and validated multi-item scales to measure the newly proposed constructs (e.g. King et al., 2012; Xiong et al., 2013). These organizational practices include brand-oriented recruitment (King & So, 2015; Murillo & King, 2019), brand training (Huang & Lai, 2021; King, 2010; Murillo & King, 2019; Punjaisri & Wilson, 2011), brand communication (Buil et al., 2016; Burmann et al., 2009; Du Preez & Bendixen, 2015; Punjaisri & Wilson, 2011), and brand leadership (Burmann et al., 2009; Morhart et al., 2009, Terglav et al., 2016).
Among these, brand training is the most common organizational practice aimed to shape employees' brand behaviors, and in that sense can be characterized as the core practice in the internal branding toolkit. Indeed, some studies do not measure brand training separately but only a global internal branding construct with a prevalence of brand training items (e.g. Dechawatanapaisal, 2019; Huang & Lai, 2021; Punjaisri & Wilson, 2011; Van Nguyen et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2015). In studies that explicitly measure brand training, the construct appears under different labels, such as brand training (Murillo & King, 2019), brand-oriented training (King & So, 2015), brand knowledge dissemination (Baker et al., 2014; King, 2010; King & Grace, 2010), and brand-centered training (Buil et al., 2016). These studies show uniformly positive impacts of brand training on various outcome variables, such as brand commitment (King, 2010; Yang et al., 2015), brand value congruence (Baker et al., 2014), and brand understanding (King & So, 2015; Murillo & King, 2019; Murillo & Teran-Bustamante, 2020).
2.2 The moderator effects of the relationship between brand training and brand understanding
In order to deliver a differentiated customer experience, the employee must understand the meaning of the service brand, i.e. the brand identity, brand values, and the promises made to consumers through external advertising (Brodie et al., 2009). In addition, the employee must learn the specific behaviors that the brand translates into during service encounters with customers (Fleming & Witters, 2012). This knowledge conveys a sense of self-efficacy to the employee regarding their ability to fulfill the brand promise at the service encounter (Xiong et al., 2013). Internal branding research has approached this knowledge through the notion of employee brand understanding, defined here as the cognitive representation of the brand within employees' minds (Baumgarth & Schmidt, 2010).
This notion plays a central role in many internal branding studies, and several labels have been advanced for constructs sharing similar conceptualizations, such as shared brand understanding (Vallaster & Chernatony, 2005), brand knowledge (Chung & Byrom, 2021; Kimpakorn & Tocquer, 2009; King & Grace, 2010; Terglav et al., 2016; Van Nguyen et al., 2019), corporate brand knowledge (Hoppe, 2017), internal brand knowledge (Baumgarth & Schmidt, 2010; Morokane et al., 2016; Ngo et al., 2019), and brand...
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