Internal Branding - In search of a new paradigm: Guest editorial

Abstract

In search of a new paradigm: Guest editorialInternal Branding has come a long way in being accepted as one of the building blocks of the brand management academic domain.When the first scholarly papers around the topic of internal marketing and internal brand anchorage were published (Greene et al., 1994;Richardson and Robinson, 1986;Wasmer and Bruner, 1991), not a few of the established researchers critically assessed this new stream of research (Lings and Brooks, 1998), as being mainly anecdotal, practice-oriented and highly qualitative.They also criticized its lack of sufficient demarcation from disciplines, such as human resource management or psychology (Rafiq and Ahmed, 1993).But those times have long gone.Internal Branding today is an established subdiscipline of brand management, and studies show how Internal Branding positively affects brand performance (Burmann and Zeplin, 2005;Iyer et al., 2018;Tuominen et al., 2016).Although many drivers have contributed to the growing relevance and reputation of Internal Branding, two are key.First, service industries have come to dominate in developed economies, which gives emphasis to the key role employees play in defining brand experience in the many touchpoints in customer-brand relationships (Gronroos, 2006;Iglesias and Saleem, 2015).Second, the emergence of the internet and social media have created a hyperconnected and transparent world and exponentially increased the number of touchpoints where employees, customers and other stakeholders can interact and contribute to a brand's meaning (Vallaster and Von Wallpach, 2013).This raises opportunities for brands to establish new communication channels between employees and customers and drive brand equity (Baumgarth and Schmidt, 2010;Burmann Jost-Benz et al., 2009).However, at the same time, it also creates significant challenges.Employees, in the way they behave and communicate, can enrich the brand, but the amplifying effect of social media can also undermine the intended brand meaning (Ind and Schmidt, 2019).

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