Strategic Perspective of Internal Branding: A Critical Review

Abstract

Organizations strive to discover the ‘holy grail’ of their competitive advantage.Brand management is treated as a critical success factor to generate competitive advantage. Because brands are valued by customers the brand building efforts are looking for new ways to deepen the brand-customer relationship. The value creation process of the firm’s product or service needs to have unique and inimitable strategies to retain customers. This study pertains to the strategic significance of the internal branding which is rarely addressed in the literature of brand management. Considering the determinants and effects of internal branding in the success of an organization several illustrations are also added in this review. The internal stakeholders who are the face of the brand need to espouse the brand values in order to align external branding with internal branding in order to successfully deliver the brand promise. The study can help future research through which organizations can attain success through internal branding.

Keywords: brand management, internal branding, communication, customer orientation