Employee brand fit is ‘the perceived congruence between the brand values and the employee’s own personal values’ (Löhndorf & Diamantopoulos, 2014). According to the social identity and brand-specific theories, when the brand values align with the values of employees, the brand benefits from a good ECOB. Employee or brand identification causes employees to passionately serve customers. This employee behaviour plays an important role in shaping customers’ perceptions of a brand. Ammar et al. (2021) found that employee behaviour affects perceptions of brands in the tourism and hospitality industry. The key factors responsible for gaining a competitive advantage in the service industry are employees’ interaction with customers, their display of customer-oriented behaviour, and their ability to build trust and establish a strong brand–customer relationship (Dorta-Afonso & Cantero-Garcia, 2020). Driven by brand training and brand reward, in the telecommunications sector, EBF positively influences ECOB (Abdghani et al., 2022). One of the customer-oriented behaviours from EBF is an employee providing brand knowledge to customers for brand decisions (Moorman et al., 2024). Thus:

Employee brand knowledge is ‘all descriptive and evaluative brand-related information, as well as the personal meaning about a brand retained in employees’ memory’ (Liu, 2022, p. 3). Employees with a deep understanding of their brand have the likelihood of demonstrating customer-oriented behaviour (Yurtseven & Şandir, 2018), because the wealth of knowledge about the brand amongst employees is similar to human capital guiding customers to make brand purchases (Moorman et al., 2024). Employee brand knowledge better equips employees to offer accurate brand information and brand offerings. Employee brand knowledge also enables them to effectively address customer inquiries and concerns and create positive experiences for customers (Abdelmoteleb et al., 2017; Liu, 2022). This, in turn, results in high customer satisfaction, loyalty and positive-word-of-mouth recommendations (Löhndorf & Diamantopoulos, 2014).

Employee brand knowledge, comprising employees’ appreciation of brand awareness and image (Liu, 2022), also contributes to the construction of the brand itself (Yurtseven & Şandir, 2018). With a strong understanding of their brand’s ‘identity, values and message, employees can effectively align their brand behaviour with the brand image (González-González et al., 2022). This alignment fosters brand identity and further strengthens brand reputation in customers’ eyes (Fortunisa et al., 2021). By consistently representing the brand in a customer-oriented manner, employees contribute to building trust and credibility with customers (Bairrada et al., 2021). This ultimately leads to enhanced customer relationships, increased brand awareness and improved organisational performance (Retamosa et al., 2020). Generally, the behaviour of employees and their perception and appreciation of the organisation’s brand significantly influence customer decisions (González-González et al., 2022).

Employee brand belief is based on an employee’s perception of the brand’s value for customers’ recommendations (Löhndorf & Diamantopoulos, 2014), which is also followed by the ‘employees’ internal evaluation of the value and importance of the brand to customers and organisational success (Xiong & King, 2020, p. 573). Löhndorf and Diamantopoulos (2014) and King and Grace (2010) emphasise the pivotal role that brand belief and trust amongst employees play in building and maintaining strong brands. When employees have a good perception of a brand, and they believe in its ability to satisfy their customers, they develop customer-oriented behaviour and resultant outcomes such as purchase intentions, customer loyalty and positive word-of-mouth around the brand (Löhndorf & Diamantopoulos, 2014). Employee brand belief also leads to employee confidence in delivering on what the brand promises to customers and enables brand-aligned performances (Xiong & King, 2020):

Organisational identification is a relational process and psychological alignment with an organisation for being a growing and successful entity to a point that the interest, goals and success of the organisation internally motivate and psychologically empower employees (Barattucci et al., 2025). In line with SIT, an employee emotionally connected to an organisation has a better likelihood of understanding the business direction, believing in and supporting the organisation. An employee can also perform as required to help the organisation build its brands and succeed (Barattucci et al., 2025; Duh & Wara, 2024; Löhndorf & Diamantopoulos, 2014). Employees strongly identifying with their organisation likely exhibit behaviours that prioritise and cater to customer needs and satisfaction (Zhang, 2016). These behaviours go beyond the scope of their job description and contribute to the overall effectiveness and success of the organisation. Organisational identification and social identity play a pivotal role in shaping ECOBs in line with the organisation’s brand and values (Löhndorf & Diamantopoulos, 2014; Xie et al., 2024). Employees’ brand love, loyalty and positive word-of-mouth can be influenced by their sense of belonging. The sense of belonging is fostered by organisational identification coupled with a strong identification with the organisation’s brand community (Zhang, 2016) and may eventually lead to customer-oriented behaviour (Duh & Wara 2024):

Employees often expect organisational brand characteristics and values to be congruent and consistent, which may enhance their self-concepts for emotional brand connection (Changani & Kumar, 2024; Gulati et al., 2023). Employee or corporate brand congruence drives brand identification and commitment, both of which motivate ECOB (Gulati et al., 2023; Löhndorf & Diamantopoulos, 2014). As a brand becomes congruent with employees’ ideal and actual self, brand identification increases. Gulati et al. (2023) and Ngo et al. (2020) show that these factors lead to ECOB. In line with customers, whose customer–brand congruence generates behavioural and relational brand outcomes (Wijnands & Gill, 2020), employee–brand congruence can also result in behavioural outcomes (e.g. orientation to serve and satisfy customers) and relational outcomes (e.g. brand commitment) (Gulati et al., 2023):

Perceived organisational support refers to the degree to which employees feel that their organisation values their contributions and is concerned about their wellbeing (Aldabbas et al., 2023), particularly in relation to brand-building activities (Löhndorf & Diamantopoulos, 2014). On the basis of social exchange theory, employees pay back what they perceive as supportive treatment from their employers through stronger attachments to the organisation and customer-oriented behaviour (Eisenberger et al., 2001). Considering that POS builds the employee–employer relationship, improves employee wellbeing and encourages employee actions to align with organisational goals (Kurtessis et al., 2017), employees tend to be creative in delivering on the brand’s promise to customers. These factors cause employee customer-oriented behaviours (Aldabbas et al., 2023; Löhndorf & Diamantopoulos, 2014). Whilst Park and Kim (2024) propose that POS can only impact ECOB by work engagement, the model of Löhndorf and Diamantopoulos (2014) suggests that POS directly influences ECOB. Bizri and Hamieh (2020) also show POS directly influences ECOB:

Brand admiration refers to consumer or employee positive emotions towards a brand. Admiration can be characterised by respect, liking and appreciation (Ahmad et al., 2023; Park et al., 2016). It can be deep-seated depending on the brand’s perceived quality, value of the brand and general brand performance (Park et al., 2016; Trivedi & Sama, 2020). Admiration can also be generated from the brand’s trustworthiness, reliability, likeability, love and respect (Ahmad et al., 2023; Pak et al., 2016). Employee-customer-oriented behaviour includes several dimensions, such as employee knowledge of customer needs, willingness to help, responsiveness and ability to understand and anticipate customer needs (Park & Tran, 2018). This helps fortify brand admiration (Alkandi et al., 2023; Ferdous et al., 2021), particularly as it positively affects how employees perceive the brand. Employee-customer-oriented behaviour not only benefits customers but also has a positive effect on employees themselves (Aslam et al., 2022). When employees believe that their actions make a difference in customer lives, this creates a sense of purpose and job satisfaction (Ali & Anwar, 2021). It consequently generates greater engagements amongst employees and boosts more brand admiration and resultant productivity (Chaudhary, 2019; Dangle & Bagga, 2023; Ramirez-Lozano et al., 2023):

With brand admiration reflecting consumer and even employee’ high love, respect, regard and a positive and emotional connection with a brand (Park et al., 2016), we questioned how much it will drive brand leadership in terms of brand popularity, value, quality and innovativeness. Given the fact that brand admiration can generate income, cut expenses, facilitate growth, raise the morale of staff and preserve market share, brand admiration should propel brand leadership. This is equally so because brand admiration fosters consumer advocacy and loyalty (Kang, 2019).

Based on the embodiment of brand admiration that includes brand love, respect, regard, and trust, a prediction suggests that its indicators can contribute to durable and sustainable relationships and brand leadership (Aaker, 2012; Park et al., 2016). As a result, employees also admire their brands, which increases their love and engagement with the brand (Park et al., 2016; He et al., 2019) to a degree that pushes them to contribute to brand quality, popularity, innovativeness and brand value. All of these are the four dimensions of brand leadership (Chang & Ko, 2014; Chiu & Cho, 2021):

The hypotheses are presented in Figure 1.

Theoretically, the study contributes to the fields of brand management, human resources management, internal brand management and leadership. Drawing on these disciplines, we contributed to explaining the four dimensions of brand leadership, whose explanation is not only sparse in the literature but also for leading brands in Africa. The two brand leaders studied are from two industry sectors – construction (physical product) and telecommunication (services) – to broaden the findings’ generalisation. Compared to previous studies, such as that of Chang and Ko (2014) and Chiu and Cho (2021) that examined brand leadership from a consumer perspective and mainly to test the nomological ability of brand leadership, our study enriches the literature by showing brand leadership determinants from organisational, internal branding, HR and leadership perspectives. Our study also enriches the ideas and models of Löhndorf and Diamantopoulos (2014) on how the elements of internal brand-building (EBK development, brand fit, brand belief and organisational support), organisational identification and brand congruence (affectionate elements) can drive ECOB along the path of building brand admiration, which we found to be a strong driver of brand leadership.

This study also makes theoretical contributions by employing ideas from social identity, brand-specific leadership and social exchange theories for the development of an integrative model that enabled the examination of the path to building brand leadership. In his book titled Corporate Brand Leadership Starts from the Inside, Urde (2024) worries that the few attempts to understand brand leadership are mostly from how, why and what of the brand but rarely on ‘who’ behind the brand. This study contributes by revealing to companies and their managers how to build brand leadership from who factors (i.e. people and person factors behind leading brands). Our tested integrated model can be used by other brands in Africa and globally on how to build leading brands from the inside.

The interdisciplinary nature of our integrated model developed and tested here provides managers with various insights into building ECOB, brand admiration, and leadership from the IBM and leadership perspectives. African brand leaders can now understand that their strength, admiration and leadership do not only come from how customers respond to brands but also from the top person’s leadership style and IBM strategies around the people (employees).

Whilst the two brand-specific leadership styles of BSTSL and BSTFL are beneficial, the current study confirms Morharts et al.’s (2009) warning that focusing on the BSTSL style (i.e., BSTSL) is tricky. This stems from the danger of having a negative impact on ECOB because of its exchange or quid pro quo nature. For example, an employee feeling of not being appreciated enough according to the contributions made to the brand using BSTSL may negatively impact ECOB. A BSTFL style, as found, is a better way to go. The transformational leadership style, according to Jensen et al. (2020), inspires or motivates employees, raises optimism and team spirit, and stimulates employees to a degree of fostering innovative thinking and creative problem solving for ECOB.

In their special issue on IBM, Piehler et al. (2016) emphasise the important role that IBM plays in brand management and resultant company success through customer-related outcomes such as customer brand attachment, satisfaction and customer-based brand equity. Our study reveals that EBB, EBF and POS are the elements of IBM that can significantly guarantee the customer-related outcomes. Although not significant, OI and BCB made a positive impact in the current study. All of these indicate that IBM strategies should focus on these elements. The elements, especially the EBB, EBF and OI, can be built through constant brand information generation and dissemination, which Duh and Wara (2024) have shown to produce a chain of effects, such as brand knowledge (awareness and image), brand role clarity, brand commitment and resultant employee satisfaction, BCB and employee positive word-of-mouth.

Thus, to enhance the IBM elements studied here, managers should do their best in explicit and implicit brand communications. The explicit communication can be via frequent brand-building orientations and verbal communications and the implicit communication can be through exhibiting behaviours reflecting organisational brand prestige and identity (Duh & Wara 2024). Brand storytelling by managers is a growing, explicit way to educate employees about the brand for better internalisation (Duh & Wara, 2024; Erkmen, 2018), from which EBB, EBF, OI and even brand love and customer orientation can be built (Bookies & Christodoulides, 2020).

Despite the importance of ECOB, especially as it can make customers happy and cause retention (Piehler et al., 2016), we did not find a significant relationship between ECOB and brand admiration, although the relationship was positive. This indicates that managers should regularly perform appraisal of employee contributions to customer service and satisfaction and compliment and reward employees. Employees can then appreciate and admire the brand from their contributions and not only from the overall brand performance emanating from marketing and financial metrics.

Considering the strong relationships between brand admiration and all four brand leadership dimensions (brand quality, popularity, value and innovation), it becomes imperative for managers to prioritise the development of brand admiration amongst employees. This can be achieved by giving employees, and not only the marketing department, opportunities in brand-building, highlighting and celebrating brand achievements and instilling a sense of pride related to employees’ linkage with the brand. Park et al. (2016) show that brand admiration is built amongst consumers by enabling, enriching and enticing consumers; this should also be the case with employees to enhance how much IBM generates ECOB for resultant brand admiration and leadership.