2. A brief history of internal branding
As with the emergence of the related concept of employer branding, which represents the application of branding principles to human resources management (Ambler & Barrow, 1996; Foster et al., 2010; Moroko & Uncles, 2008), the field of internal branding was not initially characterised by academics advancing the idea that employees are an essential target group of brand management. Practitioners mostly drove early internal branding literature with their book publications (Ind, 2001), as well as their publications in academic (Bergstrom et al., 2002; Ind, 2003) and practitioner-focused (Mellor, 1999; Mitchell, 2002; Zucker, 2002) journals. Following this stage, academics began to advance the field by defining and developing the internal branding concept. In addition to producing individual papers that shaped the development of the concept (Table 26.1), several clusters of academics from different regions of the world emerged, publishing a series of academic papers. These distinct research clusters made noteworthy contributions to developing the field of internal branding.
Table 26.1 Internal branding publications outside the identified research groups | Author(s) | Contribution(s) |
| Aurand et al. (2005) | Discussion of human resource management's role in internal branding |
| Chong (2007) | Case study on how internal communication and training enable a company to deliver on its brand promise consistently |
| Mahnert and Torres (2007) | Identification of 25 key factors of failure and success in internal branding and introduction of a consolidated internal branding framework |
| Kimpakorn and Tocquer (2009) | Investigation of the effect of the employer brand dimensions on employeesâ brand commitment |
| Baumgarth and Schmidt (2010) | Introduction of internal brand equity and examination of its relationship with company-level and individual-level determinants and customer-based brand equity as a consequence |
| Hughes and Ahearne (2010) | Investigation of the impact of two types of salesperson identification and manager control system alignment on brand extra-role behaviours and (brand) performance |
| Raj Devasagayam et al. (2010) | Integration of the research streams of brand community and internal branding to investigate the viability of intraorganizational brand communities in internal branding |
| Chang et al. (2012) | Introduction of brand psychological ownership into internal branding and examination of organizational-level antecedents, individual-level and organizational-level outcomes and customer outcomes |
| Sharma and Kamalanabhan (2012) | Examination of the internal corporate communication (ICC) process and its effect on internal branding objectives |
| Sirianni et al. (2013) | Investigation of the effect of employee â brand alignment of frontline service employees on overall brand evaluations and customer-based brand equity as customer responses |
| Matanda and Ndubisi (2013) | Examination of the moderating role of goal congruence on the effects of internal branding and internal customer orientation on person-organization fit |
| Gelb and Rangarajan (2014) | Examination of employeesâ contributions to brand equity |
| Lohndorf and Diamantopoulos (2014) | Study of the mediating role of organizational identification on the effects of employee-brand fit, brand knowledge, and belief in the brand on employee brand-building behaviours |
| Du Preez and Bendixen (2015) | Examination of the effect of internal brand management on job satisfaction, brand commitment, and intention to stay |
| Erkmen and Hancer (2015) | Investigation of the effect of employeesâ brand citizenship behaviours on customersâ evaluation of brand performance, brand trust, and brand commitment |
| Helm et al. (2016) | Study of the effect of brand self-congruity on employeesâ brand identification, brand pride, and brand-related behaviour |
| Kaufmann et al. (2016) | Development of a conceptual model for the effect of behavioural branding on customersâ brand love and co-creation |
| Terglav et al. (2016) | Investigation of the mediating effect of employee brand knowledge, employee-brand fit, and psychological contract fulfilment on the relationship between brand-oriented leadership and brand commitment |
| Du Preez et al. (2017) | Analysis of the effect of internal brand management on brand citizenship behaviour and intention to stay through job satisfaction and brand commitment |
| Liu et al. (2017) | Examination of the processes whereby brand orientation affects in- and extra-role employee brand-building behaviour from the perspective of the attention-based view |
| Anees-ur-Rehman et al. (2018) | Investigation of the relationship between brand orientation and financial performance through internal branding, brand communication, brand awareness, and brand credibility |
| Dechawatanapaisal (2018) | Examination of the relationships among internal branding, brand orientation, brand identification, brand commitment, and employeesâ intention to stay |
| Garas et al. (2018) | Analysis of the relationship between internal branding and employeesâ brand supporting in-role and extra-role behaviour, mediated by employeesâ role clarity, affective commitment, and continuance commitment |
| Iyer et al. (2018) | Investigation of the relationships between brand orientation, strategic branding, internal branding, and brand performance |
| Schmidt and Baumgarth (2018) | Identification of success factors of brand ambassador programs |
| Ngo et al. (2019) | Introduction of a cognitive-affective-behaviour model of internal branding proposing that internal brand knowledge triggers employee brand identification that influences brand- and customer-focused behaviours, which in turn foster employee performance |
| Boukis and Christodoulides (2020) | Development of a model of antecedents and consequences of employee-based brand equity (EBBE) via brand knowledge and brand identification |
| Iglesias and Ind (2020) | Holistic integration of the co-creation perspective into corporate brand management with multiple stakeholders helping to build and enrich the corporate brand |
The first three clusters come from the United Kingdom and the United States. Leslie de Chernatony and colleagues were among the first academics to bring attention to internal branding issues. Their publications deal with internal branding objectives (Thomson et al., 1999) and internal branding activities (Harris & de Chernatony, 2001; Vallaster & de Chernatony, 2005, 2006), particularly in the services branding context. The second research cluster from the United Kingdom formed around Khanyapuss Punjaisri, Alan Wilson, and Heiner Evanschitzky. This cluster developed a holistic internal branding model, comprising internal branding objectives, activities and moderators, and validated it empirically (Punjaisri & Wilson, 2007, 2011). Another cluster originates in the United States with Sandra Jeanquart Miles and W. Glynn Mangold conceptualizing and empirically examining the employee branding process (Miles et al., 2011; Miles & Mangold, 2004).
Two more clusters of internal branding researchers emerged in Germany and Switzerland. Together with their colleagues, Christoph Burmann, Sabrina Zeplin, and Rico Piehler introduced a holistic internal branding model comprising internal branding objectives, activities, moderators, and consequences (Burmann & Zeplin, 2005; Piehler et al., 2015). They validated the model in several studies across different contexts (Burmann et al., 2009; Piehler, 2018; Piehler et al., 2016). A German-Swiss cluster around Torsten Tomczak and Franz-Rudolf Esch introduced the behavioural branding concept. They outlined the brand behaviour funnel as the core of their approach in their edited book Behavioral Branding, proposing that internal branding activities affect internal branding objectives, leading to internal branding consequences (Tomczak et al., 2012). In addition, they published several journal articles on specific internal branding activities (Henkel et al., 2007; Morhart et al., 2009; Wentzel et al., 2010).
Finally, another cluster to develop internal branding emerged around Ceridwyn King and Debra Grace from Australia. Within the realm of services marketing, these authors investigated internal branding consequences, objectives, activities, and antecedents (King & Grace, 2005, 2008, 2012). Drawing from the concept of customer-based brand equity as âthe differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brandâ (Keller, 1993, p. 1), they also introduced the concept of employee-based brand equity, defined as âthe differential effect that brand knowledge has on an employeeâs response to internal brand managementâ (King et al., 2012, p. 269).
Table 26.1 presents examples of other academic publications outside those identified research clusters that have advanced specific internal branding research areas.
After the initial growth of the field, academics engaged in structuring and consolidating fragmented internal branding knowledge and extending that knowledge. They achieved structure and consolidation through the publication of literature reviews (Barros-Arrieta & GarcĂa-Cali, 2020; Saleem & Iglesias, 2016) and special issues in branding journals (e.g., 2018 special issue âInternal Brand Managementâ in...
