Branded Employee Behaviour as a Double-Edged Sword: How Perceptions of Service Employees Impact Job Seekers' Application Intentions

Abstract

Prior brand experiences affect job seekers’ application decisions, as they recall service encounters with brands which they have experienced as customers. As brand representatives, service employees play a critical role in these recollections. Their behaviour might inform job seekers’ understanding of the employer brand, thereby affecting their application decision. The impact of the service employee’s behaviour might be even more impactful if this behaviour is branded, meaning that the employee’s appearance and manner are representative of the brand values. In this paper, we analyse whether and how branded service employee behaviour affects job seekers’ application intentions. We argue that branded service employee behaviour provides two opposing signals: it contributes to consistent evaluations of the brand, leading to more brand trustworthiness and enhancing job seekers’ application intentions. However, it may also be perceived as inauthentic, reducing job seekers’ application intentions. Findings from a scenario experiment provide evidence of both effects.

The effects of employee behavior in sustainable service organizations

“…Moreover, research showed that consistent employee behavior positively influences brand trustworthiness of job seekers (Wünderlich et al , 2020), and customer trust can positively influence WOM about a company (Gremler et al , 2001). Furthermore, trust is proposed as an important mediating variable between customer perception of CSR and their attitude toward a company (Kim et al , 2015).…”

“…Given the latter’s growing awareness and preference for sustainability, this finding underlines the importance of SMO-aligned employee behavior in sustainable service organizations. Thus, when companies recruit service employees, it is advisable that they select applicants who can identify themselves with the corporate values, since they could behave in a more authentic way (Wünderlich et al , 2020). In other words, they probably trust these values, which can spill over to customers and leads to positive WOM, in turn, as our study showed.…”

“…Based on the logic of CREDs, Kraft-Todd et al (2018) showed that employees who act in accordance with a certain campaign are perceived to be more credible compared to those who only promote it without engaging in the required behavior. Previous studies also indicated that the alignment between employee behaviors and company values positively affects customers’ perceptions (Sirianni et al , 2013), which also increases brand trustworthiness (Wünderlich et al , 2020). Here, we assume that SMO-aligned employee behavior signals a company’s willingness to deliver on its promises and meet customer expectations so that they have a positive image.…”

“…In this context, the marketing literature uses various terms to describe employee behavior that supports company values such as “brand-aligned behavior” (Sirianni et al , 2013), “brand consistent behavior” (Wentzel, 2009), “brand-congruent behavior” (Löhndorf and Diamantopoulos, 2014), “in-role brand-building behavior” (Morhart et al , 2009) and “brand advocacy behavior” (Schepers and Nijssen, 2018). Such behavior affects WOM (Gremler et al , 2001), brand success (Henkel et al , 2007), evaluations of service performance (Baker et al , 2014), overall brand evaluations (Sirianni et al , 2013), attitudes (Wentzel, 2009) and even job seekers’ application intentions (Wünderlich et al , 2020). Moreover, employees can also exceed the role expectations of their positions and enhance customer perceptions through, for example, extra-role helping behaviors (Wang et al , 2020).…”