Influence of internal communication on employees’ brand outcomes

Internal branding studies indicate that organizations are pointing to effective internal communication as an influential factor in business success in ensuring the delivery of the brand promise by their employees, particularly the customer-interface employees. Internal communication satisfaction makes employees feel that they are identified with, committed and loyal to the brand, so they would behave in ways that support the brand reality. The Communication Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ) is the most widely used business communication satisfaction questionnaire. However, the constructs of internal communication satisfaction from the CSQ have not been used in the internal branding concept in developing countries. Therefore, this researcher’s aim was to conceptualise and evaluate the role of internal communication satisfaction constructs from the CSQ constructs, which include seven constructs (Organizational Perspective, Organizational Integration, Personal Feedback, Relationship to Supervisors, Horizontal Communication, Media Quality and Communication climate) on employees’ brand outcomes in the hotel business in Thailand. Furthermore, this study provides empirical evidence to support the link between the domain of internal communication satisfaction and employees’ brand attitudes and brand behaviours. Within a positivist paradigm, the study employed a survey to collect data from customer-facing employees in the hotel business in Thailand in both high ranking and low ranking hotels. The data consists of 1,212 customer-facing employees from high ranking hotels and the other 535 employees from low ranking hotels. The study then analyses the data using a structural equation model. There are three notable findings upon which conclusions can be drawn from this study. First, the seven CSQ’s constructs as the domain of internal communication satisfaction in the internal branding concept can help employees represent a brand to customers that come into contact with the brand. Second, this study confirms previous studies that claim internal communication satisfaction is a tool of internal branding that shapes employees' brand attitudes (e.g. identification, commitment, and loyalty) and employees’ brand behaviours. Finally, the seven domains of internal communication satisfaction (created from the CSQ) in the internal branding concept can be used in both hotels of high and low customer ranking in Thailand context and communicated to staff to achieve higher employee brand performance. The study contributes to marketing academic knowledge by: (1) identifying the seven CSQ’s constructs as the domain of internal communication in the internal branding concept; (2) extending the concept of internal branding to explain how internal communication influences employees’ brand performance, and (3) confirming the functional importance of both organizational and management communication from the corporate communication approach, which will help employees achieve the internal branding goals. Managerially, the study provides a model for marketers to conceive and design the internal communication whose attributes work together to create employees’ brand outcomes and competitive advantage in business. It isolates the key role played, in developing effective measurement internal communication tools for the business, by the desire to explore both employees high and low in the variable work performance. The study consists of a series of philosophies and methods in quantitative research, and each tool for quantitative studies necessitates a choice. The researcher is aware that the same research objectives could have been met using a qualitative research methodology. The main limitations are now reviewed, and point the way towards future research.