The role of brand-specific transformational leadership for employee brand-building behaviour

Employee performance plays a vital role for the success of a service brand (Berry 2000; Vallaster and de Chernatony 2005). Other than with product brands, where consumers’ perceptions of a brand derive predominantly from a product’s tangible features, customers’ perceptions of a service brand depend highly on the behavior of front-line staff. It is they, through their demeanor, communications, and actions, who build an image of the service brand in the minds of customers. Of the variables that are likely to elicit brand-building behaviors on the part of front-line workers, effective leadership has been proposed as one of the key driving forces. Specifically, transformational leadership (TFL) as a leadership style oriented toward follower-development has been suggested to be of high value in the context of services brand building efforts (Vallaster and de Chernatony 2005). However, to date no specific attempt has been undertaken to conceptually and empirically substantiate this assumption. The purpose of this research is to explore how transformational supervisors may enhance brand-building behaviors on the part of front-line employees. We attempt to (1) conceptualize a new construct – employee brand building behavior; (2) adopt the concept of TFL to the specific domain of branding; and (3) explain the working mechanisms of the brand-specific transformational leadership process.