Misconceptions of Branding Behavior in the Retail Sector: A Delphi Study: An Abstract

Abstract

A brand represents not only the relationship an organization has with its customers but also with its employees. The existence of incongruences in employee behavior during service transactions can disrupt the successful delivery of brand experiences (Clemes et al. 2000) and signal the need for proper alignment of frontline employee (FLE) behavior with brand values. One such incongruence was recently identified by Du Preez et al. (2017) when studying behavioral consequences of internal brand management among FLEs. The authors posited the existence of different operational worlds within the same organization that can cause different interpretations of brand-oriented behaviors. As a result, the two forms of brand-oriented behavior, in-role brand behavior (IRBB) and extra-role brand behavior (ERBB), cannot be successfully aligned with the organization’s vision. This might occur due to the increase in importance attributed to the employee branding role, causing managers to mistakenly embed ERBB in job descriptions without fully understanding them and treating ERBBs as IRBBs and confusing FLEs.