Internal brand factors driving successful financial services brands

Abstract

PurposeHaving a successful brand that is integrated and coherent can provide a sustainable competitive advantage. The aim of this paper is to identify internal factors contributing to financial services brand success and ultimately to facilitate better‐informed branding activities, thereby growing brand equity.Design/methodology/approachA grounded theory approach is adopted and indepth interviews were carried out with 68 respondents amongst six financial services organisations.FindingsThe organisations with more successful brands were characterised by the following factors: a holistic, consistent and integrated approach to branding, a focus on excellent and personalised customer service, an ethos which challenges the norm, a responsiveness to change, a high degree of brand literacy, and a synergy between the brand and organisational culture.Research limitations/implicationsThe study was bound by the availability of respondents' time. The focus was to examine a relatively small sample of organisations in considerable depth. Moving forward, it is intended that a quantitative study will be undertaken to generalise and expand on these findings within the financial services market.Practical implicationsA number of significant managerial implications are drawn from this work, for example using the brand ethos model to enable employees to internalise their brand and the use of “brand jigsaw” workshops to facilitate brand consistency.Originality/valueThe results provide valuable insights into financial services brand management, encouraging the employment of more effective branding techniques within a sector that has traditionally had little interest in branding.

Internal branding in universities and the lessons learnt from the past: the significance of employee brand support and transformational leadership

“…Internal branding is generally implemented in service sectors, e.g., charity organizations (Hankinson, 2004), financial service organizations (de Chernatony & Cottam, 2006), hospitals (Gapp & Merrilees, 2006), airlines (Chong, 2007), hotels (Punjaisri & Wilson, 2009 and shared-service call centers (Burmann & König, 2011). Internal branding is about aligning employees' behavior with brand values by promoting and educating them about the brand values (Aurand et al, 2005).…”

Internal branding: an enabler of employees' brand‐supporting behaviours

“…However, the literature has argued for the influence of internal branding on employees' brand-supporting behaviours (e.g. Boone, 2000;de Chernatony and Cottam, 2006;de Chernatony and Segal-Horn, 2001;Hankinson, 2002;Kotter and Heskett, 1992). However, that internal branding could shape employees' behaviour is largely based on the assumption that when employees understand and are committed to the brand values inherent in the brand promise, they will perform in ways that live up to customers' brand expectations.…”

Service Branding: Suggesting and Discussing Four Perspectives Influencing a Value-Creating Service Brand at the Company Level

“…In contrast, a service brand consists of a cluster of functional and emotional values [36] which need to be managed by change-oriented and innovative service brand leadership [23,38,50,51]. Nevertheless, the rationale for branding physical goods and services is the same, the aim being to build and leverage the brand equity to develop a strong relationship between the brand owner and the stakeholders, particularly the customers [35].…”

“…[38] argue that a brand represents a holistic, comprehensive experience that is based on excellent and personalized customer service, challenges an organization's values and norms, and is responsive to change. According to Schlager et al (2011), a brand is created in the triangle between the company, the customers and the employees.…”