Antecedents of brand citizenship behavior in retailing

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2014.06.002Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Internal Brand Management is a significant driver of Brand Citizenship Behavior.

  • Identifying a brand message and communicating it effectively is important.

  • Significant differences were found between full-time and part-time employees.

Abstract

There has been increased interest in retail branding yet there is a dearth of internal branding research in this industry. The purpose of this study is to explore the antecedents of Brand Citizenship Behavior (BCB) in a retail environment. The role that the frequency of employee contact with customers plays will also be examined. A further aim is to give guidance to retailers on how they should develop an internal branding management strategy. A conceptual model provides a foundation for the study. A literature review of the brand citizenship behavior and the related constructs was undertaken to inform the model. The results show support for the hypothesized relationships. Significant differences between managers and associates as well as between full-time and part-time associates were found. Recommendations are presented to retailers.

Introduction

Both practitioners and academics agree that employees in service industries play a key role in building a brand and in its eventual success (Miles and Mangold, 2004). Morhart et al. (2009) contend that “customers׳ perceptions of a service brand depend highly on the behavior of frontline staff” . Thus, customers׳ image and experience of a brand is often influenced by the way employees behave and perform on the job (de Chernatony et al., 2003). Terms such as “brand ambassadors” (Vallaster and de Chernatony, 2006), “brand champions” (Fram and McCarthy, 2003, Morhart et al., 2009), and “living the brand” (Burmann and Zeplin, 2005) have been used to capture the spirit of desired employee behavior. These behaviors form part of a larger concept termed brand citizenship behavior (BCB) (Burmann and Zeplin, 2005).

Retailing differs from other service industries because of the regular, extensive interaction between employees and customers as well as the fact that the retailer׳s brand is usually different from the portfolio of manufacturers׳ brands offered for sale (Burt and Sparks, 2002). According to Ackfeldt and Coote (2005), retail employees are boundary spanners with multiple roles to fulfill, are evaluated on the productivity and quality of their performance, and are typically young and inexperienced workers. Thus, in a retail environment, BCB should be regarded as an important determinant of a customer׳s experience of the brand.

Prior research on the antecedents to organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is extensive (Jain et al., 2012, Yi et al., 2013), but research on BCB is limited and there is even less focus on the retail industry. In a major study in this field, conducted in German service industries, only 15.1% of the sampled employees worked in retail and 12.3% had contact with customers (Burmann et al., 2009). In another study, conducted among employees working in Australian service industries, 53.8% of respondents were middle or senior managers, thus having limited customer contact (King and Grace, 2012). Two other studies had a greater focus on service staff but were conducted in the hotel industry in Taiwan and Malaysia (Chang et al., 2012, Shaari et al., 2012).

The paucity of research in this field motivated this research and its purpose is to explore the antecedents of BCB in a retail environment. The role that the frequency of employee contact with customers plays will also be examined.

Section snippets

Theory and hypotheses

BCB is based largely on the theory of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) which is the notion that “organizations need their employees to engage in discretionary behaviors beyond formal job requirements” (Uçanok and Karabati, 2013, p. 89). The term was coined by Organ (1964) based on Barnard׳s (1938) ideas of “willingness to cooperate” and “innovative and spontaneous behaviors” (Katz, 1964). In their review of theoretical and empirical research on OCB, Podsakoff et al. (2000) identify

Sampling

This research was conducted among associates of a well-known grocery chain operating in the USA. The chain employs more than 100,000 people and operates over 1,000 stores. So as not to disrupt operations, management of the company agreed to allow the survey to be conducted in one specific district using 10 randomly selected stores within this district and 40 associates from each store.

Ten packets each containing 40 surveys, envelopes and memos together with one master list containing the names

Results

Of the 400 paper surveys mailed to the stores, 358 questionnaires were returned. 117 of these responses were incomplete and discarded. The remaining 241 surveys represent a response rate of 60%. The demographic details of the sample are presented in Table 1.

Discussion and theoretical contributions

Our study makes a number of theoretical contributions to the marketing literature. We find that the three component model of brand citizenship behavior proposed by Burmann et al. (2009) is not supported in the retail environment. Only brand acceptance and brand development are present, but not brand proselytization. The absence of brand proselytization may be due to the fact that consumers buy a portfolio of national brands at a supermarket and do not always purchase products with the retail׳s

Managerial implications

Retail Managers are concerned with brand building and customer service issues among other duties. Our study identifies the importance of internal brand management as an issue as it is fundamental to a retailer׳s brand building efforts. Many companies focus energy, time and capital into outward facing marketing campaigns, which are critical to the success of an organization; however, effort should also be placed on marketing inwardly toward associates, especially in a service-oriented retail

Limitations and future research

As with any study there are limitations, which must be addressed. First we conducted it in a single context and a single industry. Additional testing in other contexts and other industries would help extend and validate our research model. Second, the sample was drawn from ten stores in one district. Future research should be carried out in other regions as this may yield differences. Third, common method bias must be considered as the instrument used to gather data was a Likert scale-type

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