| Research problem The purpose of internal branding is to encourage employees to ‘live the brand’. In the services sector, it is widely recognised that the employee is often the embodiment of the brand playing a critical role in its delivery. For both academics and practitioners, it is important to deepen understanding as to how business inculcates the values of the corporation and the brand into its employees, as well as the difficulties faced. In the extremely competitive financial services industry, people are often viewed as the key differentiator; consequently, understanding how internal branding is delivered in these organisations, is highly relevant. An abundance of literature is available on the topic of internal marketing and its subset internal branding. However, the big question, which has largely remained unanswered, is exactly ‘how’ internal marketing is practised so that it encourages and enables employees to deliver on the brand promise. There remains a paucity of research into the actual execution of internal branding in corporate environments, with some notable exceptions such as King and Grace (2005), Punjaisri et al. (2009) and Punjaisri and Wilson (2011). Moreover, information on the barriers to implementation and/or the failure of internal marketing initiatives is also scarce. Schultz (2004) identifies five reasons for internal branding failure, including the silo-based mentality prevalent in many organisations and little or no financial measurement of the outcomes. Set against this context, the purpose of this research is to understand how corporate organisations deliver the internal branding message to their staff as well as the barriers and obstacles faced. The research focuses on two specific objectives 1. To elicit managers’ experiences as to how their organisations enable frontline employees to understand the brand, focusing on those aspects deemed critical to the success of internal branding; 2. To explore managers’ perspectives of the barriers and obstacles which inhibit the success of internal branding This qualitative research analyses data from ‘one-onone’ interviews with three key roles in the organisation. These are: senior executives responsible for service delivery; marketing managers actively engaged in the internal branding effort and frontline supervisors who drive the internal branding message to their staff. These managers detail first-hand experiences of internal branding execution. In addition, both barriers and obstacles to internal branding are explored. This research uses the models developed by Burmann and Zeplin (2005) and King and Grace (2009) to probe the specific actions taken by five financial services organisations for building internal branding competence to the extent that frontline employees are able to ‘live the brand’. Schultz (2004) is the primary model used to understand the difficulties and obstacles faced. |
