Brand meaning and institutional work: The light and dark sides of service employee practices

Abstract

Service employees (SEs) are instrumental in shaping customer brand perceptions. However, to deliver favorable brand experiences, SEs may not always abide by socially constructed norms and guidelines—called institutions—that coordinate service interactions. We explore how SEs navigate internal and external institutions, and the potential implications for brand meaning outcomes. Drawing on qualitative interviews with SEs from five local and international bank brands in Vietnam, and archival data, we discover 10 practices that function as institutional work and identify potential implications for brand meaning outcomes of authenticity, relevance, and legitimacy. Using institutional theory as an enabling lens, we demonstrate how these practices either disrupt or maintain internal and external institutions with dark-side or light-side consequences for brands. Specifically, our findings uncover how dark-side practices may place brand meaning outcomes at risk and how light-side practices, even those that disrupt institutions, can potentially enhance brand meaning, providing significant theoretical and managerial implications.