The effect of employee behavior on brand personality impressions and brand attitudes

Abstract

This research examines how consumers update their brand personality impressions and brand attitudes after interacting with one of the brand's employees. Drawing on stereotyping theory, the author develops a framework that proposes that the impact of an employee's behavior depends on how the employee is categorized. When the employee is considered primarily as an exemplar of the brand's workforce, his or her behavior is generalized more strongly to the brand. When, however, the employee is judged as a relatively unique individual (i.e., when the employee is subtyped), the behavior is not transferred to the brand to the full extent. The results of three studies provide converging evidence and show that the degree to which consumers subtype an employee is determined by the amount of information they possess about the employee, the extent to which they depend on the employee, and their motivation to form an accurate impression. The findings have direct implications for marketers interested in understanding how employees affect the brands they represent.

Brand authenticity: An integrative framework and measurement scale

“…Another manifestation of brand behavior (i.e., indexical cue) consists in behavior of employees who represent the brand. Employees who deliver on a brand's promise are important for a brand's success (Henkel, Tomczak, Heitmann, & Herrmann, 2007;Punjaisri & Wilson, 2007;Wentzel, 2009). If promises made in a brand's communication activities are not kept along all consumer-brand touch points, the brand's credibility decreases (Burmann & Zeplin, 2005).…”

Seeing you seeing me: Stereotypes and the stigma magnification effect.

“…Although being prototypical might be beneficial for the individual frontline employee when customers predominantly associate positive attributes with the organization (cf. Wentzel, 2009), prototypicality will likely be harmful when the organization is stigmatized, prototypicality will render the stigma psychologically salient to both the employee and the customer during the encounter. The more prototypical that frontline employee is for a specific organization, the more they quintessentially represent what the organization stands for and as a result, the more they are judged on the basis of their organizational affiliation.…”

How strong is the business-to-business brand in the workforce? An empirically-tested model of ‘internal brand equity’ in a business-to-business setting

“…Other research reported in the service marketing literature has addressed such aspects of the employee communication style, and its effects on customer evaluation, as employees' non-verbal communication (Hennig-Thurau, Groth, Paul, and Gremler, 2006); 'adaptive selling' and customer orientation (Bettencourt & Gwinner, 1996;Sparks, Bradley, & Callan, 1997); employee satisfaction (Hartline & Ferrell, 1996;Homburg & Stock, 2004); and customer perception of employee effort (Mohr & Bittner, 1995;Specht, Fichtel, & Meyer, 2007). Beyond the services marketing literature, Wentzel (2009) has analyzed the effects of different facets of employee communication on consumer's perceptions of brand image and attitudes to the brand in various product categories. All studies in this research stream underpin the relevance of interpersonal communication between employees and customers to successful branding, and hence, to the importance of internal brand equity in general.…”