Investigating the Behavioral / Attitudinal Consequences of Internal Brand Management among Sales Personnel of Farmand Company

Internal brand management is an effective factor in building and maintaining a strong brand. This sustainable competitive advantage includes the activities within an organization to ensure reflection on the brand value, so the staff can play an important role in the processes of managing and promoting internal brand.  A new approach with emphasis on the role of employees in branding has been taken into account in recent years. This approach has been affected by internal brand management, brand commitment, brand citizenship behavior and job satisfaction. Most of the models of branding are proposed in other countries and thus are designed and implemented according to their own market. Considering the importance of internal brand management and researches conducted on the personnel’s behavior, the present research aims to investigate the behavioral / attitudinal consequences of internal brand managementsuch as brand citizenship behavior, intention to stay, brand commitment and job satisfaction, among sales personnel of Farmand Company to implement the branding model in Iran and to probably modify those models based on the needs and characteristics of Iran market.

The present research is applied in nature. It is also descriptive and correlative because it concerns the behavioral / attitudinal consequences of internal brand management. The statistical population of the research includes all 257 sales personnel of Farmand Company. To collect the data, a standard questionnaire was distributed and the data were analyzed through Structural EquationModeling (SEM), Partial Least Squares using Smart PLS2 software.

The results approved the positive effect of internal brand management on brand commitment and job satisfaction among the sales personnel in Farmand Company. Moreover, the positive effect of internal brand management on brand citizenship behavior considering the mediating role of brand commitment was confirmed. However, it was observed that internal brand management has no positive effects on intention to stay with mediating role of job satisfaction and brand commitment. In addition, the findings showed that internal brand management has no positive effect on brand citizenship behavior with mediating role of job satisfaction.

Regarding employees as internal customers, brand orientated human resource practices (recruitment, induction and training) are one way that can be the key to a successful internal brand management program.With the increase in internal brand management, we can expect improvement in the commitment of Farmand Company sales personnel to the brand. If brand identity, brand leadership and brand communication improve as the leverage of internal brand management, job satisfaction will increase. Employees may be more likely to stay with any increase in the payment because most employees today are not financially supported and are unlikely to want to continue working with the organization because of the organization's low-wage relationships or brand personality. Also, factors such as work-related psychological stress including role ambiguity, role conflict, and repetitiveness of the role can also lead to a tendency to quit. Job satisfaction has a wide range of features including job characteristics, payment, promotion, supervision, benefits, work environment, co-workers, and so on. Uncertainty about how salaries and remuneration are paid is one of the factors contributing to the decline in employee job satisfaction and ultimately their commitment to the brand. Job satisfaction has many dimensions and may not be fully implemented among the all staff. In this case, the employee may be dissatisfied with the whole organization and he may decide to quit if there are better suggestions from rival organizations. Besides, top-down job ordering, job uniformity and disregarding staff can be a cause of job dissatisfaction and a tendency to quit. Having a strong brand is a top priority for any organization and employees can play an important role in achieving such a goal. Employees who do not have sufficient information about the brand's mission and future goals will not be effective in accomplishing the goals. Employees need to be confident about their position in the company and to be considered as a part of the brand in order to try to help brand to achieve its goals (extracurricular behaviors).