uoc RESEARCH

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Research Method Page 1

01. INTRODUCTION

For the purpose of reviewing two journal articles we selected the following two articles,

Service brand equity and employee brand Commitment The effect of strategic and tactical cause-related marketing on consumers brand

loyalty

The following sections carry out an analysis for each article as Well as a summary of the

analysis.

01)MEASURING THE SERVICE BRAND EQUITY AND THE

EMPLOYEEBRAND COMMITMENT

Purpose The aims of this article are to measure the brand equity of service firms (luxury

hotels) using a customer perspective, to identify factors that predict customers brands

relationships and to explore the links between service brand equity and employee brand

commitment

Design/methodology/approachTwo surveys were conducted to achieve the research

objectives. The first survey objective was to measure brand equity using a sample of 250

international customers of five-star hotels in Bangkok. The second survey objective was to

collect information regarding employee brand commitment in each selected hotel using a

sample of 250 employees.

Findings Results show that hotels belonging to the same category have different brand

equity and that brand differentiation and brand trust are the variables that have the major

influence on customer brand relationships. Perceived service quality and associations

related to hotel core services are not related to brand relationships. High hotel brands

equity have a stronger level of employee brand commitment that low hotel brands equity.

Research limitations/implications For hotel managers the research findings illustrate the

importance of brand differentiation and trust for international hotels chains and illustrate

the importance of employee brand commitment in the process of building a strong band.

Therefore this research has an implication not only for marketing but also for human

resource managers and for hotel general managers.

Originality/valueThe value of this research resides in the exploration between service

brand equity and employee brand commitment. The literature on service marketing

emphasizes the link between employee and service quality but to the authors knowledgelittle research has explored the link between the service brand and its employees


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What is BRANDING?

The concept of branding finds its roots in the fast moving consumer goods industry (FMCG)

and it is not surprising that traditional models of brand equity developed by Aaker (1991,

2002), Keller (1993, 2003) have been largely inspired by that industry. There is no doubt thatthe service industry can benefit from the knowledge accumulated by consumer goods firms.

Nonetheless, the nature of services, specifically their intangibility and the inseparability

between production and consumption requires a different approach to build a powerful

service brand.

What Is Service Brand Equity?

Brands represent enormously valuable pieces of legal property, capable of influencing

consumer behavior, being bought and sold, and providing the security of sustained future

revenues to their owner. The value directly or indirectly accrued by these various benefits isoften called brand equity (Kapferer, 2005; Keller, 2003).

A basic premise of brand equity is that the power of a brand lies in the minds of consumers

and what they have experienced and learned about the brand over time. Brand equity can

be thought of as the "added value" endowed to a product in the thoughts, words, and

actions of consumers. There are many different ways that this added value can be created

for a brand.


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Distinguish between different brand equity concepts


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Employee brand commitment

The dominant paradigm in service marketing is probably the service profit chain (Heskett et

al., 1994) that suggests the existence of a strong link between employees, service quality

and company profitability.

Employee commitment is an organizational behavior concept largely covered in the

management literature. The concept has been applied to different constituencies in an

organization, including unions, work group and team, supervisor and top management.

However the concept of employee commitment to a brand seems to be neglected.

A review of this literature shows that Porter et al. (1974) and Cook and Wall (1980) view

commitment as a one-dimensional concept, mainly affective commitment. They define

organizational commitment as . . . a strong belief in and acceptance of the organizations

goals and values, a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organization,and a strong desire to maintain membership in the organization . . .. Commitment is

viewed as one single factor, affective commitment comprising three interrelated

components:

1. Identification.

2. involvement and

3. loyalty

Following their discussion on service brand equity and its six components They use brand

relationships as a dependent variable and brand awareness, perceived quality, core brand

associations, supportive brand associations, brand trust and brand differentiations as

independent variables and They propose the following hypotheses:

H1. Five star luxury hotels are significantly different in their brand equity.

H2. Brand awareness is positively related to brand relationships.

H3. Brand differentiation is positively related to brand relationships.

H4a. Core brand associations are positively related to brand relationships.

H4b. Supporting brand associations are positively related to brand relationships.

H5. Brand trust is positively related to brand relationships.

H6. Brand perceived quality is positively related to brand relationships.

H7. Employees commitment to the brand will be significantly different between hotels

with strong brand equity and hotels with lower brand equity.

Their research design is divided in two parts using samples of hotels customers and

employees. First, they conducted a survey on international hotel customers with the

objective to measure the brand equity of luxury hotels in Bangkok.


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They used a convenience sample of 270 international customers. Personal interviews were

conducted with customers to collect relevant information. The initial questionnaire included

43 items to measure the six dimensions of brand equity on a five points Likert scale. Finally

after editing, 238 questionnaires were used for the final analysis.

*See appendix 1-3

Findings and discussions

MANOVA was used to test H1 examining the existence of significant differences between

hotels regarding their brand equity. The results are shown in Table III. The F test and p-value

supports H1, in that there is a significant difference the brand relationship is brand trust,

follows by brand differentiation, brand associations related to supporting services, and

brand awareness respectively. Based on these results, H2, H3, H4b and H5 are supported

and H4a and H6 are rejected.

Conclusion and limitations

The focus of this study was to explore the brand equity of luxury hotels in Thailand and to

examine their employee brand commitment. They suggested that the concept of brand

equity has the same meaning for consumer goods and services brands but the stheirces of

brand equity are different. In service firms, the customer experience that occurs during

interaction with employees or self-service technologies is an effective way not only to

create brand meaning but also to connect customers emotionally with the brand. Therefore

employee commitment to make the brand alive is critical.

2) The effect of strategic and tactical cause-related marketing on

consumersbrand loyalty

Purpose The first objective was to find out to what extent consumers reveal an effect of

strategic and tactical cause-related marketing on brand loyalty. Second, the article seeks toassess the moderating role of consumer involvement with a product on the relationship

between cause-related marketing and brand loyalty.

Design/methodology/approachAn experimental design with 240 participants was used.

Findings The results show that consumers perceive a significantly enhanced level of brand

loyalty as a result of strategic cause-related marketing as long as the firm has a long-term

commitment to this campaign and the campaign is related to a low involvement product.

Consumers do not exhibit a significant impact of tactical cause-related marketing campaigns

whether related to high or low involvement productson brand loyalty.


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Research limitations/implications First, all respondents were students from a western

European university. Second, the experiment relied on imaginary storyboards. Third, the

program dimensions were not manipulated separately.

Practical implicationsIf companies intend to increase brand loyalty through CRM they

should set up long lasting CRM campaigns linked to the product that shows the lowest level

of consumer involvement.

Originality/valueThe added value of this paper is the link between cause-related

marketing programs and brand loyalty. Moreover, a distinction is explicitly made between

tactical and strategic CRM programs.

Theoretical background

Cause-related marketing (CRM)

Cause-related marketing is to be situated in the context of corporate social responsibility

(CSR). Here, they define CSR as:

Within this notion of CSR, CRM is a specific marketing activity in which the firm promises its

consumers to donate company resources to a worthy cause for each sold product or service.

A CRM campaign aims at two objectives: to support a social cause, and to improve

marketing performance (Varadarajan and Menon, 1988). This way, CRM programs take a

responsibility towards at least three stakeholders: the firms consumers, its shareholders

and one stakeholder not directly related to the commercial activity of the firm.

In the present study, they investigate to what extent the marketing effect of strategic CRM

differs from the effect of tactical CRM. Varadarajan and Menon (1988) argue that strategic

CRM is characterized by high senior management involvement, a substantial amount of

invested resources and a long-term commitment of the firm or business unit towards the

CRM campaign. Alternatively, Drumwright and Murphy (2001) and Till and Nowak (2000)

characterize tactical CRM as a marketing activity that lasts for a short period of time and has

scant employee involvement. As can be seen from Figure 1, they conceive tactical and

strategic CRM to differ on few dimensions:

(1)The congruency between the cause and a companys core competency (Pracejus andOlsen, 2004).

(2)The duration of a campaign (Till and Nowak, 2000).(3)The amount of invested resources (Macleod, 2001;Theylsh, 1999).(4)The degree of senior management involvement (Macleod, 2001; Miller, 2002).


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Measurement

Relying on these story boards, respondents filled in a questionnaire. In the questionnaire,

they measured the respondents score on each of the few dimensions of a CRM design, the

respondents level of product involvement, and their brand loyalty. Since these story boards

built upon fictitious situations it was not possible to measure respondents actual behavior.

Therefore, they consider the affective and cognitive components of brand loyalty as the

attitudinal dimension, while they treat the cognitive component (behavioral intentions) as a

proxy for the behavioral dimension of brand loyalty.

*see appendix 4

Moderating effect

To test the moderating role of a consumers product involvement on the relationship

between the design of a CRM campaign and a consumers level of brand loyalty, they

performed an independent sample t-test to assess the difference in brand loyalty for CRM in

case of high and low product involvement irrespective of the CRM scenario. So they

aggregated the responses of the strategic and tactical scenario. As the upper part of Table VI

shows, these differences are not significant (t-value is 0.732). As a consequence, they

cannot support hypothesis six. In addition, they assessed the power of this moderating

effect for strategic and tactical CRM separately. The lower part of Table VI reports that

product involvement does not have a significant effect on the relationship between

strategic CRM and brand loyalty (t-value is 20:697). However, the effect of product

involvement on the relationship between tactical CRM and brand loyalty is also revealed in

Table VI. Clearly, higher levels of product involvement significantly strengthen the impact oftactical CRM programs on brand loyalty (t-value is 1.972).

*see appendix 5-6

Managerial implications and limitations

The findings from this experimental study can be used by managers to optimize the impact

of their CRM programs. In sum, if companies intend to increase brand loyalty through CRM

they should set up long-lasting CRM campaigns linked to the product that shows the lowest

level of consumer involvement. Short-term CRM campaigns as well as CRM campaignslinked to high involvement products may benefit a third party and, as such, may be relevant

in terms of a firms policy for corporate social responsibility. However, they do not yield for

the firms customers or shareholders.


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04. THE SUMMARY

Attribute Article 01 Article 02

Article Type Research Research

Philosophy Positivism Interpretive

Approach Deductive Deductive

Research Question To what extent consumers reveal

an effect of strategic and tactical

cause-related marketing on brand

loyalty.

Identifying the factors that predict

customers brands relationships

and to explore the links between

service brand equity and

employee brand commitment

Purpose Aim Do consumers perceive a

significantly enhanced level ofbrand loyalty as a result of

strategic cause-related

marketing?

Investigate the impact of the

employee commitment in buildingstrong brands and the relationship

between the two variables

Goal Study the importance of

consumer-led marketing activities.

Analyse the interrelationship

between the employee

commitment and the brand equity

Significance A distinction is explicitly madebetween tactical and strategicCRM programs...

The experiment relied onimaginary storyboards.

Provide an easy to followdiscussion and empirical

analysis of a major branding

principles

Exploration between servicebrand equity and employeebrand commitment.

Two surveys were conductedto achieve the research

objectives

This research has animplication not only for

marketing but also for human

resource managers

Variables

Dependent

Independent

Percentage change in the totalbrand equity+ goodwill

The amount of resourcesinvested in a CRM campaign.

The degree of seniormanagement involvement in a

CRM campaign

Brand equity Brand

awareness/Relationship

Employee commitment Service Quality

Model Cause-related marketing (CRM) Brand Equity model

Hypothesis Consumers respond more

positively to CRM programs that

are intrinsically motivated. They

Employees commitment to the

brand will be significantly

different between hotels with


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consider brand loyalty as a

potential way to express

consumers positive responses.

strong brand equity and hotels

with lower brand equity.

Indicators CongruencyResources investedManagement involvementProduct involvement

Brand Equity ModelsEmployee Turnover

Sample Period 1994 to 2006

Sampling Frame 240 Participants- Group 250 International customers and

250 employees

Data Collection

Analytical Method

Outcome Hypothesis accepted Hypothesis accepted


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05. APPENDICES

Service brand equity and employee brand Commitment The effect of strategic and tactical cause-related marketing on consumers brand

loyalty

APPENDIX 1

APPENDIX 2


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APPENDIX 3

APPENDIX 4


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APPENDIX 5

APPENDIX 6

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