Brand signalling: An antecedent of employee brand understanding

There is inherent power in having a well-informed, knowledgeable workforce who understand the organisation’s brand promise and their role in delivering the promise to customers. Consistent delivery of the brand promise ensures customer satisfaction and loyalty, and ultimately brand competitiveness and profitability. Despite its importance, little research attention has been given to employees’ understanding of the brand promise and what it means in terms of their brand-aligned behaviour. A challenge therefore exists for organisations wanting to ensure that their brand promise is both understood and consistently fulfilled by frontline employees. This paper responds to this need by offering a conceptual model bringing focus to brand signalling, namely brand signal quality, brand signallers and brand signal channels, as antecedents to the development of employee brand understanding. The conceptual model benefits organisations by describing the role that brand signalling plays in communicating the brand promise and elevates the importance of employee understanding of the brand to fulfil the promise. This paper sets the scene for future research within this important, but underrepresented field of internal brand management research; focusing on understanding employees’ cognitive processing of the brand and delivering on the brand promise.