Abstract
The existing literature on internal branding has often adopted a managerial-based approach and seldom considered employees’ perceptions. Therefore, there is a need to understand the perspective of frontline and non-managerial employees. In this context, the current study investigates the impact of internal brand management on brand commitment, brand citizenship behavior, and sustainable competitive advantage for the hotel industry. A survey-based quantitative data was gathered from 390 non-managerial frontline staff working in 3-, 4-, and 5-star hotels of Pakistan. The results revealed that internal brand management positively impacts brand commitment, brand citizenship behavior, and sustainable competitive advantage. Besides, brand commitment has a positive impact on brand citizenship behavior and sustainable competitive advantage. Moreover, brand citizenship behavior has a positive impact on sustainable competitive advantage. In addition, the mediating roles of brand commitment and brand citizenship behavior exist between internal brand management and sustainable competitive advantage. The research implications, together with research limitations, have also been discussed.
Highlights
Branding has proved to be the best trend abounding the hotel industry worldwide [1–3]
Since the research objective was to examine the impact of internal brand management factors on sustainable competitive advantage, primary data from the participants were collected through a structured questionnaire using a quantitative approach
The results (β = .532, p < .001; β = .286, p < .001; β = .154, p < .001, respectively) demonstrate that these hypotheses have been accepted related to variables of internal branding, brand commitment, brand citizenship behavior, and competitive advantage
Summary
Branding has proved to be the best trend abounding the hotel industry worldwide [1–3]. Employees are the prime focus in internal branding because they are essential to build a brand and shape it inside the customers’ minds. Both scholars and practitioners agree that successful service-brand enactments are necessary for the acquisition of competitive advantage. Companies focus their customers on aligning the external and internal brand management [7, 8]. Managers patronize their employees in different ways [9, 10], for example, by giving them a sense of belonging and building an atmosphere that encourages them to continue and participate [10]
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