Internal Branding: an empirical study in an Austrian retail company

In times of decreasing brand loyalty, weaker advertising effectiveness and customer price sensitivity, it is essential that service-oriented companies create a strong corporate brand by making sure that customers can feel the brand value at all touchpoints - whether from store construction, product range, but especially the behaviour and service of employees. Employees make a brand alive, function as daily brand ambassadors and therefore provide emotional attachment to a brand. Through internal branding employees get enabled to function as such brand ambassadors. For this reason, the master thesis illustrates several internal branding measures like brand-centred HR, brand communication, leadership culture and work environment factors as well as desired internal branding outcomes. A conceptual model was developed which describes the relation between these internal branding results (brand knowledge, brand identification, brand commitment, brand loyalty and brand behaviour) and selected internal branding measures. The model was examined on the basis of an empirical study in an Austrian retail company which was subsequently analysed with Partial Least Squares path modelling. The focus of the master thesis is to understand the internal branding process from an employees’ perspective.