This ad's for you... and you: Brand management for multiple stakeholders

Sammanfattning: Background: In the competitive market for modern retailing, brand management is concerned with attracting and retaining both external and internal stakeholders. While brand building and marketing efforts have traditionally focused on building customer-based brand equity, another stream has emerged - internal branding that focuses on human capital and employee-based equity. Recent studies show that internal stakeholders also see and react positively to marketing communication, which implies that the traditional approach to marketing may be underutilizing its reach. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate how to portray a brand identity in a consumer ad to foster identification for both customers and employee. The results aim to provide concrete recommendations about how to maximize advertising spending. Method: The study is conducted in cooperation with a Swedish-founded international retailer, Retailer X. It uses a descriptive cross-sectional study design with survey-based data collection, with the majority of responses gathered in person at one of Retailer X's Stockholm locations. Findings: The results implicate that to target both employees and customers, Retailer X should communicate a brand identity that highlights organizational associations (company values). Doing so can indirectly build a dual-sided brand equity through identification by employees and customers. In addition, communicating product value in brand identity was found to positively influence customers only, and can thus build customer-based brand equity. Key words: Brand equity, brand identity, identification, marketing communication, stakeholders