Date of Award

11-2016

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)

Department

Business Administration

First Advisor

Riyad Eid

Second Advisor

Dr. Mohamed Al Waqfi

Third Advisor

Dr. Ananth Chiravuri

Abstract

Internal branding is a new marketing paradigm to gain effective brand strategy that has recently emerged in the academic literature of marketing. It is a brand spirit that brings together brand loyalty, management and employees to their mutual benefit to create and deliver a value-added product or service to employees, customers and stakeholders (Keller, 1993). {Keller, 1993 #59}Generally, studies on the role of internal branding in creating a competitive organisational culture by considering antecedents that enable internal branding and its consequences do not exist within the UAE context. This study aims to show the importance of internal branding, and to develop and test a conceptual model that integrates specific constructs as antecedents and consequences of internal branding, these are external customer orientation, internal customer orientation, interdepartmental connectedness, quality of internal services, external customer satisfaction, and job satisfaction. The study takes on a quantitative approach a positivist enquiry, i.e., the primary research is in the form of a survey questionnaire and the secondary research is drawn from the literature. The questionnaire was designed and distributed amongst a selected sample of 300 employees from cross-functional sections in Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development, where they were asked to test the suggested model. The findings identified four factors as the antecedents plus two factors as the consequences of internal branding. The study proposes an empirically tested integrated model of the antecedents and consequences of internal branding that will enable organisations to implement internal branding leading to business success. The developed conceptual model could contribute superior value to the Departments of the Abu Dhabi Government in general, and to the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development to contributing a practical business solution, particularly to its success. This study is the first to propose a model that integrates the antecedents and consequence of internal branding in a government setting in the UAE. The outcomes and findings of this study will, as it is hoped, to enrich the internal branding concept and literature, along with extensively extending insightful knowledge beyond the Western schools of thought to the UAE.

Comments

This research is dealing with an important issue that is not covered in the middle east region. Internal branding is relatively a new topic and the available literature is very limited. This work developed an integrated model that helps organizations to better implement internal branding in a way that will increase their employees’ satisfaction and external customer satisfaction.

Download

Included in

Business Commons

Share

COinS