Torsten Tomczak

Brand-Specific Leadership: Turning Employees into Brand Champions

This article reports two studies on how managers can elicit brand-building behavior from frontline employees. Study 1 examines the mechanisms by which brand-specific transactional and transformational leadership influence employees’ brand-building behavior. The results from a survey of 269 customer-contact employees show that brand-specific transactional leaders influence followers through a process of compliance, leading to an increase in turnover intentions and a decrease in in-role and extra-role brand-building behaviors. In contrast, brand-specific transformational leaders influence followers through a process of internalization, leading to a decrease in turnover intentions and an increase in in-role and extra-role brand-building behaviors. In turn, both processes are mediated by employees’ perceptions of autonomy, competence, and relatedness with regard to their work roles as brand representatives. Moreover, the results show that brand-specific transactional leadership moderates the influence of brand-specific transformational leadership in a nonlinear, inverse U-shaped way, so that a medium level of transactional leadership maximizes the positive effects of transformational leadership. Study 2 addresses whether managers can learn brand-specific transformational leadership. A field experiment shows that brand-specific transformational leadership can indeed be learned through management training.

Managing brand consistent employee behaviour: relevance and managerial control of behavioural branding

Purpose – This study aims to show that brand success can be improved if the brand promise that is communicated through mass media campaigns is lived up to by each employee of a company. The paper terms such brand consistent employee behaviour behavioural branding and identifies managerial instruments for its implementation and management.Design/methodology/approach – The model in the paper explains the brands contribution to company success by brand consistent employee behaviour, functional employee performance and brand congruent mass media communication. Brand consistent employee behaviour and functional employee performance in turn are modelled as determined by formal and informal management techniques as well as employee empowerment. The model is tested on a sample of 167 senior managers using partial least squares and finds empirical support. Furthermore, practical implications are provided based on additional top management focus groups.Findings – The paper finds that behavioural branding determine...

Improving Incongruent Sponsorships through Articulation of the Sponsorship and Audience Participation

The degree of congruence between the sponsor and the event has generally been regarded as one of the most critical factors of sponsorship effectiveness. However, many companies may not have logical links to sports, arts and causes and may find it difficult to find a matching property to sponsor. We posit that incongruent sponsorships are not doomed to fail and demonstrate that the negative effects of low congruence can be mitigated through articulation of the sponsorship relationship and audience participation. Results from two studies, a laboratory experiment and a field study at a sport event, provide converging results and reveal that articulation and audience participation lead to improved sponsorship evaluations, more favourable brand attitudes and an increased image transfer from the event to the sponsoring brand.

Development of a taxonomy of strategic market segmentation: a framework for bridging the implementation gap between normative segmentation and business practice

Even though market segmentation is one of the most established concepts in marketing, there are still some shortfalls in the body of research, which create a gap between theory and practice and lead to failure in the implementation of segmentation. The concept of strategic segmentation is specified as key in resolving these issues. It is shown that in any form of strategic segmentation, the following two questions need to be answered consistently: What is the objective of performing market segmentation? Which unit of analysis will be selected for the segmentation? Based on empirical findings, a taxonomy of four market segmentation strategies is developed that addresses these shortfalls. The findings show that segmentation can be induced from the customer as well as from the market; but most importantly, there has to be consistency between the objective and the unit of analysis of a market segmentation. These findings provide both useful managerial implications as well as a framework for further research.

Behavioral Branding : Wie Mitarbeiterverhalten die Marke stärkt

Marken werden nicht nur durch Produkte und Marketingkommunikation aufgebaut, sondern auch durch das Verhalten aller Mitarbeiter des Unternehmens. Die Autoren zeigen Methoden zur Analyse der Schwachstellen im Brand Behavior des Mitarbeiters auf. Sie entwickeln ein strategisches Konzept, um die Marke durch Mitarbeiter-Kunden-Interaktion zu starken. Zur Veranschaulichung werden aktuelle Ergebnisse aus Forschungsprogrammen sowie Beitrage von Praktikern aus unterschiedlichen Branchen aufgefuhrt. Neu in der 3. Auflage: Alle Kapitel wurden aktualisiert, neue Beispiele wurden aufgenommen.

Bestimmungsfaktoren des Kundenwertes: Ergebnisse einer branchenübergreifenden Studie

Der Kundenwert erfasst die okonomische Gesamtbedeutung eines Kunden fur ein spezifisches Unternehmen. Aus finanzwirtschaftlicher Perspektive bedarf es eines in Geldeinheiten ausgedruckten Kundenwerts. Aus marktorientierter Sicht interessieren die Faktoren, die den Kundenwert determinieren. Damit „diagnostische“ und „therapeutische“ Ruckschlusse fur das Kundenmanagement gezogen werden konnen, mussen diese Bestimmungsfaktoren und Treiber des Kundenwerts transparent gemacht werden. Im Rahmen dieses Beitrags werden ein die relevanten Determinanten integrierendes Modell zur Bestimmung des Kundenwerts und ausgewahlte Ergebnisse einer empirischen Studie zum Thema „Kundenwert und Kundenanalyse“ vorgestellt.

Electronic Customer Care

Scharferer Wettbewerb und rasante Fortschritte der Informationstechnik (IT) — allen voran Werkzeuge im Umfeld des Internets — verstarken den Trend zu neuen Losungen in der Kundenbeziehung. IT-gestutzte Services fur alle Phasen der Kunden-Lieferanten-Beziehung ermoglichen neue Losungen mit geringeren Kosten oder hoherem Nutzen (Electronic Customer Care). Das Kompetenzzentrum Total Customer Care der Universitat St. Gallen sammelt „Best Practices“ und Werkzeuge zum Thema Electronic Customer Care. Dieser Beitrag fast die ersten Ergebnisse zusammen und zeigt aktuelle Trends in der Kundenbeziehung.

An empirical study of quality function deployment on company performance

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) has had considerable success in terms of its implementation in companies. It has also been the subject of many studies in recent years. It seems, however, that there are some shortcomings in the research on this subject and in particular the lack of an adequate conceptual framework suitable for empirical research. This study proposes and elaborates a model which examines QFD in relation to three dimensions of performance: improvement of product quality, reduction in costs for R&D, shorter R&D time. It is the first comprehensive approach relating specific antecedents (QFD activities) to benefits and economic performance. The model is empirically tested on data gathered on a stratified random sample of manufacturing plants through the application of valid and reliable measures. The model is tested using structural equation modeling. The results show three distinct paths of direct influence which lead, respectively, to superior economic performance. Based on these findings management can focus on those QFD activities which drive economic performance most. Further research should be directed towards longitudinal studies in order to measure the effcts of those activities on performance in the long run. There are definitely non linear relations which need to be investigated.

Can I Live Up to That Ad? Impact of Implicit Theories of Ability on Service Employees’ Responses to Advertising

Service researchers have postulated that ads have an important “second” audience, namely an organization’s own service employees. Specifically, ads may depict how employees deliver on the service promise, thereby communicating to other service employees what kind of behaviors they are expected to perform. This research examines when and to what extent service employees are motivated to live up to such ad models. Two experiments at a Swiss bank demonstrate that the effectiveness of an ad model is determined not only by the challenge presented by the model’s behavior but also by an employee’s implicit beliefs. Employees who believe that their abilities are fixed (i.e., entity-focused) are more motivated to imitate an ad model if the model’s behavior is moderately challenging rather than strongly challenging. In contrast, employees who believe that their abilities are malleable (i.e., incremental-focused) are not affected by how challenging the model’s behavior is. Moreover, the reactions of entity-focused employees to challenging ads may be improved by encouraging them to mentally simulate the process they need to go through to achieve a similar performance as the model.

Der Funnel als Analyse- und Steuerungsinstrument von Brand Behavior

Die Mitarbeiter eines Unternehmens konnen einen pragenden Einfluss auf das Markenbild eines Konsumenten ausuben. Dies ist insbesondere bei dienstleistungsbasierten Branchen, in denen wesentliche Teile der Unternehmensleistung von den Mitarbeitern erbracht werden, der Fall. Aber diese Uberlegungen sind durchaus auch fur Produktmarken relevant. Der Reiz der Marke Harley-Davidson basiert z. B. nicht auf der technologischen Uberlegenheit der Motorrader, sondern auf dem Gefuhl von Abenteuer, Rebellion und Unabhangigkeit, das die Marke verkorpert (vgl. Johar et al. 2005, S. 458). Gelingt es einem Mitarbeiter nicht, dieses Gefuhl in einem Verkaufsgesprach zu bestatigen, werden die Kunden enttauscht reagieren und sich von der Marke distanzieren. Die eigenen Mitarbeiter stellen daher einen zentralen Erfolgsfaktor der Markenfuhrung dar und sind eine wichtige und eigenstandig zu bearbeitende Zielgruppe in der Markenkommunikation.