Managing brand assets internally: turning employees into an integral source of brand equity

The brand is often the most prized asset a company owns. While this intangible asset may be examined from different stakeholders’ perspectives, most research on brand equity has focused primarily on customers and the firm, thus often neglecting the importance of employees. This research draws on three studies to advance a dynamic model, which appreciates the complexity of employee-based brand equity (EBBE) by focusing on its development process and outcomes. Study 1, based on 21 interviews with employees and the pertinent literature, proposes that EBBE consists of four sequential and interdependent blocks: brand-building, brand assimilation, brand affinity and brand enactment. Study 2 uses survey data from 420 employees and leverages the advantages of fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to support the EBBE development model and its propositions, demonstrating its effects on key outcomes such as employee performance and customer feedback. Finally, Study 3 validates the EBBE model and its dynamic nature on a new sample of US employees and resampled datasets based on employment duration to validate its structural power, dynamic nature and explanatory capacity. This is the first research to examine EBBE as a complex, dynamic process, shedding light on its development and guiding organizations in managing brands by emphasizing employees as key stakeholders.