What factors influence brand perception and employee identification?
Exposé
Adrienn Patányi
European Master in Business Studies
2016-2018
What factors influence brand perception and employee identification? 2
Abstract TITLE: WHAT FACTORS INFLUENCE BRAND PERCEPTION AND EMPLOYEE
IDENTIFICATION?
KEYWORDS: Brand perception, Employee identification, Organizational identification
BACKGROUND: Organizational identification is the degree to which members define
themselves by the same attributes that they believe represent the organization. Brand
perception is how consumers perceive the brand and it is formed by all the experiences they
have with the brand, from perceived quality and price to advertising and reputation. However,
this perception does not only influence the external stakeholders of the organizations, but also
the internal ones - the employees.
PURPOSE: To investigate the underlying factors to the relation between brand perception
and employee identification with the organization.
METHODOLOGY: Qualitative research with semi-structured interview format, conducted
with 5 employees with different positions of 5 different companies.
What factors influence brand perception and employee identification? 3
Table of Contents
Abstract 2
Table of Contents 3 Table of Tables 3
Review of Literature 3
Introduction 4
Problem Statement and Research Question 5 Problem Statement 5 Research Question 5
Theoretical Background 6 Employee Identification 6
Social Identity Theory 6 Alternative Theories 6
Brand Perception 8 Employee Identification and Brand Perception 10
Review of Literature 11
Methodology 13 About the Companies 14
Hewlett Packard Enterprise 14 General Electric (GE) 14 Zara 14 Saturn 15
Overview of Chapters 16
Plan of Work 17
References 18
Table of Tables
Review of Literature 3
What factors influence brand perception and employee identification? 4
Introduction
Today there are countless of international corporations with worldwide known brands and
products, and consumers associate certain characteristics to these based on different factors.
We can found a myriad of studies, articles and books on how consumers can be influenced,
and there have been various studies written about organizational identification in the last
twenty years, investigating the different viewpoints and influencing factors, how an
employee’s self-concept is shaped by the knowledge of being a member of an organization.
Employees identify with their organization to a certain degree, whether the picture of the
organisation is positive or negative, depending on how they see the organization from the
inside and what they believe outsiders think of the organization. In my research I try to find
the underlying factors to the relation between brand perception and employee identification
with the organization.
What factors influence brand perception and employee identification? 5
Problem Statement and Research Question
Problem Statement
There has been number of studies on social identification and organizational identification,
and on how consumers are influenced by brands, what factors influence their perception,
however, there seems to be missing research on the link between brand perception and
employee identification.
Research Question
The research question therefore is:
What factors influence brand perception and employee identification?
What factors influence brand perception and employee identification? 6
Theoretical Background
Employee Identification
Social Identity Theory Social identity is an individual’s sense of who they are according to their social group
memberships which will influence their intergroup behaviour. These social groups give their
members a sense of belonging. There can be multiple identities a person has, for example
gender, race, politics, relationship, profession etc (Ashforth and Mael, 1989).
Social identification is the perception of oneness or belongingness to a group. It is considered
as a perceptual cognitive construct which does not have to be related to any distinct behaviors
or affective states. People classify themselves into social categories, and these categories are
determined by characteristics taken from their members. In the social identity theory
Ashforth and Mael states that “identification with a group is similar to identification with a
person, one defines oneself in terms of a social referent” and that group identification is
personally undergoing “the successes and failures of the group”. This identification can be
increased by various factors. First, the distinctiveness of the group’s qualities in comparison
to other groups. Second, is the prestige of the group, as identification influences self-esteem.
Third, awareness of out-groups increases awareness of one’s in-group (Ashforth and Mael,
1989). Henri Tajfel and John Turner made experiments in which they found that in-group
favoritism may happen because of both arbitrary and non-arbitrary reasons, such as tossing a
coin and dividing a class into two parts, or race, sex etc.
Alternative Theories
Organizational identity pursues to answer the question “Who are we as an organization?”.
These are the mental associations about the organization which organizational members have.
Albert and Whetten (1985) defined the attributes of an organization as central, enduring and
distinctive (CED). This identity can be expressed as shared values and beliefs, a mission, the
What factors influence brand perception and employee identification? 7
processes etc. However, it is argued whether identity is enduring or rather ever-changing and
responsive to its environment in modern organizations. (Whetten, 2006) According to Atamer
and Calori (1993) there are four elements of an organization’s identity which are the goal
orientation, norms and values, management system and the organization’s dominant logic. In
Balmer’s (1996) method the affinity organization member retain toward values and
assumption is investigated and so the organization’s identity is defined based on the degree of
this affinity by the usage of ideologies, rituals and language.
Organizational identification is a specific form of social identification, as a person’s social
identity may be extracted from the organization, department, sport club etc. Organizational
identification can be also described as a process of self-categorization (Ashforth and Mael,
1989) and organizational identification is stronger when members categorize themselves into
a group which has distinctive, central and enduring attributes. Organizational identification is
the degree to which members define themselves by the same attributes that they believe
represent the organization (Dukerich, 1994). Employees become linked to their organizations
when they integrate the characteristics they associate with their organization into their
self-concepts (Dukerich, 1994). The strength of members’ organizational identification
depends on how much their self-concepts are linked to their organizational membership.
Self-concept is “an interpretive structure that mediates how people behave and feel in a social
context” (Markus and Wurf, 1987) which may be built of a mixture of different identities of
memberships in different social groups on the basis of race, gender, work place etc
(Dukerich, 1994). Employees regularly have multiple identities as over subunits they share a
common identity, which demonstrate subunit-specific identities (Ashforth and Mael, 1989).
Hall phrased organizational identification as “the process by which the goals of the
organization and those of the individual become increasingly integrated and congruent”.
Likert (1967) stated that organizational identification in organization will produce desirable
results such as goal achievement, job satisfaction and quality of performance. On the other
way round this effect takes place likewise such as when employees feel like that their
employers cannot fulfill their obligations that will follow with low degrees of employee
performance, trust, commitment and organizational identification (Asadullah, Akram, Imran,
Arain, 2017). Efraty and Wolfe (1988) tested that there is a positive consequence of
organizational identification on satisfaction with the five job dimension (work, supervision,
What factors influence brand perception and employee identification? 8
pay, promotion, co-workers), and on three task related variables (task involvement,
investment of effort, performance effectiveness) and a negative relationship with alienation
(powerlessness, normlessness, isolation). Studies have also shown that perceived
organizational support has a positive effect on organizational identification (Edwards, Peccei
2010). Perceived organizational support is an antecedent of organizational identification, “the
extent to which individuals believe that their employing organization values their
contribution and cares for their well-being” (Edwards, Peccei, 2010). Organizational prestige
is also an antecedent of organizational identification and employees’ perceptions of their
organization’s prestige is strengthened and confirmed through the media (Jones, Volpe
(2010).
Brand Perception
Brand personality is a set of human characteristics or traits that are attributed to a brand name
(Aaker, 1997). Consumers can relate to a brand personality, if it has a consistent set of
qualities. When brand image is communicated via human traits it is called brand personality
such as smart, honest, kind but also age, sex or special occasions, quality, expertise. Brand
personality can have a substantial impact on making consumers engage with the brand, on
increasing satisfaction and brand loyalty (Seimiene, Kamarauskaite, 2014). Brand personality
is created by the controlling of brand name and other elements such as symbols, logo designs,
music, signs, celebrity endorsers, colors, layout or adaptation of provocation and humour
(Wee, 2004).
Brand image is the set of beliefs consumers hold about a brand and it is the character of the
organization. Brand image is how consumers perceive the brand. And so this brand
perception is formed by all the experiences customers have with the brand, let them be direct
or indirect. Influencing these experiences there are perceived quality, value, price, product
variety, packaging design, complete customer experience, expectations, reputation, way of
communication, distribution channels, advertising and people - both consumers and
employees of a company. There are studies which show that organizational identification is
externally targeted influenced by advertising, even though the objective ordinarily is to
influence consumers, but as it most probably will affect other groups too, together with
What factors influence brand perception and employee identification? 9
employees. Thus, organizational identification is influenced by the perception of advertising
effectiveness by employees (Rosengren, Bondesson, 2017).
Intended image is the mental associations about the organization that organization leaders
want important audiences to have. Intended image answers to the question “What does the
organization want others to think about the organization?” However, the intended image can
be different to the different stakeholder groups. Intended image is the reflection of how the
management views the way they want the organization to be perceived by different
stakeholders (Brown, Dacin, Pratt, Whetten 2006).
Construed image is the mental associations about the organization that organization members
believe others outside the organization have. Construed image answers to the question “What
does the organization believe others think of the organization?” (Brown, Dacin, Pratt,
Whetten 2006).
Corporate reputation has been defined in countless ways in the literature during roughly the
past twenty years, as it gained increasing momentum. From the cluster of assets (Barnett,
Jermier, Lafferty, 2006) as an intangible resource (Goldberg et al., 2003), through the cluster
of assessments as opinions of an organization developed over time (Bennett and Kottasz,
2000), or a value judgment about a company’s attributes (Gray and Balmer, 1998), to the
cluster of awareness as a perceptual representation of a company’s past actions and future
prospects (Roberts and Dowling, 2002). Dutton and Dukerich (1991) phrased organizational
reputation as outsiders’ beliefs about what differentiates an organization. Organizations
evidently have to strive for a positive reputation, as a positive brand reputation not only has a
positive impact on organization value performance (Koh, Lee, Boo, 2009), but brand
reputation also means the attractiveness towards the different stakeholders, such as
employees, investors or customers (Blackstad & Cooper, 1995). Thus, just like advertising, a
positive reputation can have a more favorable influence on employees, too, as employees will
have stronger feelings of pride (Rosengren, Bondesson, 2017).
What factors influence brand perception and employee identification? 10
Employee Identification and Brand Perception
From the various theories it can be observed that people in general can always identify with
something - with all the many different social groups, because each individual has multiple
identities, depending on the social context, what types of roles do they have to fit at a specific
point. Thus, so will employees identify with their working organizations. We also know that
both consumers and employees are influenced by their perceptions of the brand and
organization based on the various characteristics of the products or services and of the way
they are communicated and sold. However, there has been missing research on exactly what
factors influence brand perception and employee identification.
What factors influence brand perception and employee identification? 11
Review of Literature In this table there can be found the most important and relevant studies concerning research
on social identity, social identification, organizational identity, organizational identification
identity, intended image, construed image, reputation and also the source of description of
qualitative research method.
Topic Title Author Source Content
Social Identity Social Identity
Theory
Blake E. Ashforth, Fred Mael
The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Jan., 1989), pp. 20-39
Social identification and organizational identification
Organizational Identification
Organizational
Images and
Member
Identification
Jane E. Dutton, Janet M. Dukerich, Celia V. Harquail
Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 2, (Jun.,1994), 239-263
A model of how images of a work organization shape one’s strength of OI
Identity, Intended Image, Construed Image, Reputation
Identity,
Intended Image,
Construed
Image, and
Reputation: An
Interdisciplinary
Framework and
Suggested
Terminology
Tom J. Brown, Peter A. Dacin, Michael G. Pratt
Academy of Marketing Science. Journal; Spring 2006; 34, 2; ABI/INFORM Global pg. 99
Identifying four central viewpoints of an organization and proposing labels for each one of them
Organizational Identity
Operational
Measures of
Organizational
Identity: A
Johan van Rekom, Cees B.M. van Riel
Corporate Reputation Review, Vol. 3, No. 4, 2000, pp. 334–350 Henry Stewart Publications,
Review of empirical studies of organizational identity, how the construct has been
What factors influence brand perception and employee identification? 12
Review of
Existing
Methods
1363–3589 operationalized and measured
Qualitative, Quantitative, Mixed Research Methods
Research
Design
John W. Creswell
SAGE Publications, Inc., 2013
Qualitative method approaches
Qualitative Research Method
What is
qualitative
interviewing?
Rosalind Edwards, Janet Holland
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2013
The use of the qualitative interview as a methodological and research tool in social science
What factors influence brand perception and employee identification? 13
Methodology Qualitative research method was chosen since the aim of the study is to investigate what
underlying factors there are to the relation between brand perception and employee
identification with the organization. Qualitative methods are examining the answers to
questions with ‘why’ and ‘how’, not only ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’ or ‘who’ by asking
questions, getting answers and developing insights from a relatively small sample size,
working with non-numerical data. Qualitative research is mostly conducted in a natural
setting, where the researcher becomes the main medium of data collection and analysis. The
aim of qualitative research is to examine the meanings that people attribute to their actions,
behavior and communication with others. The research process for qualitative research has an
emergent design, meaning that the original plan for research cannot be strictly determined,
and some phases of the process may alter after the researcher sets out to collect data.
Exploration is central in most qualitative research, to investigate the compound array of
factors surrounding the main phenomenon and demonstrate the various aspects or meanings
about the issue that participants have (Creswell, 2013).
I will use a semi-structured interview format, because unlike with a structured interview
which has a strict set of questions, I can insert new ideas during the course of the interviews
depending on the different ways it can take based on what the interviewees say. In a
semi-structured interview the interviewer has a list of questions and an interview guide, but it
is quite flexible regarding the ‘when’ of the questions and the ‘how’ of the answers.
Generally, the researcher is curious about how the interviewee sees the topic, but there is
structure for comparison in a study with the same topics (Edwards, Holland, 2013, p.29).
I will conduct interviews with employees of different fields and positions from Germany,
Hungary and the Czech Republic. The interviewees will include one inside sales
representative from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Prague, one talent acquisition operations
specialist from GE, for the DACH region (Austria, Germany, Switzerland), Budapest, one
shop assistant from Zara, Hamburg, one marketing manager at Saturn, Berlin and a fifth
What factors influence brand perception and employee identification? 14
interviewee is to be found. All interviews will be audio recorded and then transcribed for
analysis.
About the Companies
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is an American multinational information technology company
based in Palo Alto, California, which was founded in November 2015, after splitting
Hewlett-Packard into HPE and HP Inc. HP Inc. has the personal computer and printing
business, while HPE has two divisions, Financial Services and Enterprise Group which deals
with servers, storage, networking, consulting and support.
General Electric (GE)
General Electric in an American multinational conglomerate corporation, founded in April,
1892 in New York, operating with the following businesses: additive, aviation, capital,
digital, energy connections, healthcare, lighting, oil and gas, power, renewable energy,
transportation, current, global research. They have 295,000 employees in 997 cities. Voted as
Best Companies for Leaders by Chief Executive, 2016, Top Employers for Equal
Opportunity by Equal Opportunity Magazine, 2016 and World’s Most Admired Companies
by Fortune, 2016.
Zara
Zara is the main brand of the Inditex group, which is the world’s largest apparel retailer with
8 brands operating over 7400 stores. Zara was founded in May, 1974 in Arteixo, Spain. There
are over 2100 stores in 88 countries.
Saturn
Saturn is a German electronics stores, founded in 1961 and today operating around 200 stores
in Germany, Austria, Luxembourg and Poland. It belongs to the Media Markt Saturn Retail
What factors influence brand perception and employee identification? 15
Group which belongs to the Metro Group. Saturn had more than 9000 employees in
Germany, in 2015.
What factors influence brand perception and employee identification? 16
Overview of Chapters 1. Introduction
2. Theoretical Background
a. Social Identity Theory
i. Social Identity
ii. Social Identification
iii. Organizational Identity
iv. Organizational Identification
b. Others
i. Brand Personality
ii. Brand Image
iii. Intended Image
iv. Construed Image
v. Corporate Reputation
3. Methodology
a. Qualitative Research Method
b. Semi-structured Interview Format
c. Plan of Interviews
d. About the Companies
i. Hewlett Packard Enterprise
ii. General Electric (GE)
iii. Zara
iv. Saturn
What factors influence brand perception and employee identification? 17
Plan of Work
Time Tasks/Phases Level
1. 01.08-31.08.2017 Finding a thesis topic Completed
2. 07.09.2017 Handing in thesis proposal Completed
3. 04.10.2017 Change of the topic Completed
4.
04.10-23.10.2017 Development of the topic and
finding the focus of study
Completed
5. 23.10.2017 Handing in the Exposé Completed
6.
24.10-05.11.2017 -Elaboration of the Exposé
-Formation of interview questions
To follow
7. 06.11-10.11.2017 Conducting the interviews To follow
8. 11.10-25.11.2017 Transcription of interviews To follow
9. 22.01.2018 Thesis Deadline To follow
What factors influence brand perception and employee identification? 18
References Ashforth, B. E., & Mael, F. (1989). Social identity theory and the organization. Academy of
management review, 14(1), 20-39.
Dutton, J. E., Dukerich, J. M., & Harquail, C. V. (1994). Organizational images and
member identification. Administrative science quarterly, 239-263.
Brown, T. J., Dacin, P. A., Pratt, M. G., & Whetten, D. A. (2006). Identity, intended image,
construed image, and reputation: An interdisciplinary framework and suggested
terminology. Journal of the academy of marketing science, 34(2), 99-106.
Van Rekom, J., & van Riel, C. B. (2000). Operational measures of organizational identity: A
review of existing methods. Corporate Reputation Review, 3(4), 334-350.
Seimiene, E., & Kamarauskaite, E. (2014). Effect of brand elements on brand personality
perception. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 156, 429-434.
Creswell, J. W. (2013). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods
approaches. Sage publications.
Garcia, D., & Gluesing, J. C. (2013). Qualitative research methods in international
organizational change research. Journal of Organizational Change Management,
26(2), 423-444.
Rosengren, S., & Bondesson, N. (2017). How organizational identification among retail
employees is affected by advertising. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 38,
204-209.
Barnett, M. L., Jermier, J. M., & Lafferty, B. A. (2006). Corporate reputation: The
definitional landscape. Corporate reputation review, 9(1), 26-38.
What factors influence brand perception and employee identification? 19
Blakstad, M., & Cooper, A. (1995). The communicating organisation. Institute of personnel
and development.
Koh, Y., Lee, S., & Boo, S. (2009). Impact of brand recognition and brand reputation on firm
performance: US-based multinational restaurant companies’ perspective.
International Journal of Hospitality Management, 28(4), 620-630.
Asadullah, M. A., Akram, A., Imran, H., & Arain, G. A. (2017). When and which employees
feel obliged: A personality perspective of how organizational identification develops.
Revista de Psicología del Trabajo y de las Organizaciones.
Efraty, D., & Wolfe, D. M. (1988). The effect of organizational identification on employee
affective and performance responses. Journal of Business and Psychology, 3(1),
105-112.
Likert, R. (1967). The human organization: Its management and values.
McGregor, D. M. (1967). The professional manager.
Edwards, M. R., & Peccei, R. (2010). Perceived organizational support, organizational
identification, and employee outcomes. Journal of Personnel Psychology.
Jones, C., & Volpe, E. H. (2011). Organizational identification: Extending our understanding
of social identities through social networks. Journal of organizational Behavior,
32(3), 413-434.
Edwards, R., & Holland, J. (2013). What is qualitative interviewing?. A&C Black.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_identity_theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_identification
http://managementstudyguide.com/brand-personality.htm
https://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2014/03/brand-perceptions-perceived-quality-rules-
the-day.html#.Wehcu6iCzIU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodology
What factors influence brand perception and employee identification? 20
https://www.hpe.com/us/en/about.html
https://www.ge.com/careers/working-at-ge
https://www.inditex.com/en/about-us/who-we-are
http://www.mediamarktsaturn.com/en/industry-trendsetter
http://www.saturn.de/de/shop/unternehmen.html
Top Related