An important question in today’s research on marketing is in what way a company can influence how customers perceive their brand and in what way they can facilitate customer retention. The aim with this paper is to research the impact the corporate brand image has on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty within the travel industry to further the understanding of how branding activities influence customer preferences. By using a survey with an experimental design, where corporate brand image is manipulated through a PR-article, the results indicate that a company can influence the loyalty a customer feels toward their brand by trying to influence the corporate brand image. The results also support the idea that corporate brand image does have its own effect on customer loyalty and is not merely indirectly influencing it through customer satisfaction. Furthermore, these results are of interest to the travel industry since it indicates that PR campaigns can aid the travel agency in differentiating itself from its competitors. In an industry with intangible and homogeneous services and a highly competitive market differentiating the brand is likely to have a positive competitive effect.

Problem: Rebranding in the services is a recent trend, which brings focus to the impor-tance of the employees in this process. Their attitudes, perceptions and views need to be considered by the management when creating the internal communication strategy related to the rebranding in order to direct the employees to the desired brand image. This raises the problem as how employees perceive the management`s rebranding efforts. Purpose: This study aims to focus on how rebranding is executed and communicated in-ternally to the employees of the company. It is interesting to find out how the employees evaluate the communication strategy that the management implements and how they perceive the new image of the company. In order to get insight to the internal rebranding process the correlation between the perceived image by the employees and the components of the internal communication strategy is presented. Methodology: The empirical approach is a case study of the Bulgarian telecommunication company Vivacom. The research includes two interviews with the management of the company and a questionnaire based on the interviews and the relevant literature, which was sent to the employees of the company. Moreover, company`s documentation and website were used to complement the information. Conclusions: The results helped us identify the decisions that the management made re-garding the rebranding and the internal communication. The quantitative data indicated the relatively positive attitudes and views of the employees for the management`s rebranding efforts. They also showed good knowledge and awareness of the new brand elements.

This study investigates a debatable subject of branding; building brand equity in industrial service markets, particularly within the logistics service industry. The extant literature provided many brand equity models, the brand resonance pyramid being the most predominant one. However, the literature suggests the model should be amended for the B2B service markets as the industry has numerous different characteristics to consider. Servbrand Framework is one of the undergoing efforts to provide a brand equity framework applicable within the B2B service industry as an amended version of the brand resonance pyramid. Nevertheless, the model is based on a single empirical context. This research assesses the transferability of the model to the logistics service industry and therefore provides a guideline to build a strong brand in the logistics service industry. The research took an interpretivist approach with an exploratory qualitative research design to apply the Servbrand Framework within the logistics industry. Sixteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with the decision-makers in purchasing logistics services within the automotive industry in Germany, who were subject to the non-probability sampling process. The results indicated that the Servbrand Framework is transferable to the logistics service industry with minor changes. Two new subdimensions are proposed as ‘service experience’ and ‘consideration’ to be part of the client-brand opinions block within the framework. Also, the ‘servicescape’ and ‘personableness’ subdimensions were not relevant for the context of the study. Logistics service providers can build strong brands by initially creating salience among the customers by using corporate naming strategies attached to core competencies. Service providers also need to develop good performance and people attributes connected to their brand, which will create positive brand opinions and, therefore, long-term relationships and partnerships. The people aspect was a key element to build strong brands and facilitate the brand's meaning to the customers.

Background: In the last decade, digitalisation and globalisation have intensified competition and customer power, making price and quality minimum requirements rather than differentiators. As a result, branding has become crucial in the B2B context for creating competitive advantage and customer loyalty. Purpose: The purpose of this research is to examine the role of branding in a B2B service purchasing decision. More specifically, the research will focus on how buyers of services perceive that they are influenced by the brand when selecting a service provider. Method: A cross-sectional single case study was conducted on the recruitment agency Poolia. Semi-structured interviews with seven customers, two pilot interviews, and one interview with a case representative was the source of the collection of the primary data. A thematic analysis with an inductive approach was used for analysing and collecting data. The analysis focused on identifying relevant themes in the data and resulted in the creation of a conceptual model. Conclusion: It can be concluded from the findings that B2B purchase of a service lacks a defined process due to the highly interactive nature of the environment. Further, it could be seen that service brands have a significant impact on the purchasing decision and that the extent to which branding impacts varies depending on the level of relationship between the entities. Factors of branding were discovered to impact different parts of the purchasing process.

Les services sont intangibles et le personnel en contact leur visage. Les employés doivent remplir les promesses implicites et explicites de la marque en internalisant l'image de marque. Mais jusqu’à quel point ? Afin d'explorer et d'étudier la dynamique de l'alignement du personnel en contact, cette recherche a adopté un design mêlant analyse quantitative et analyses quantitatives. Une étude qualitative a été menée pour explorer les antécédents de l'alignement de la marque du personnel en contact. Un total de 8 observations et 92 entretiens avec des clients ont été menés. L’analyse de ces entretiens permet d’identifier les déterminants à l’alignement à la marque. Les résultats montrent que l’alignement est perçu à travers leur qualité d'interaction qui comprend leur attitude, leur comportement, leur expertise et l'apparence du personnel en contact. Par la suite, deux études quantitatives ont été menées pour développer et tester la mesure de l'alignement de la marque du personnel en contact et tester le modèle de la recherche. 567 réponses ont été analysées pour l'étude 1 et 432 pour l'étude 2. Un modèle structurel permet de tester la chaine de conséquence : Qualité Interactionnel – alignement – évaluation globale de la marque et sa valeur. Par ailleurs dans la relation alignement-évaluation globale de la marque et sa valeur, les effets modérateurs de l’authenticité perçue du personnel, la durée de l’interaction et du suralignement sont identifiés. Les résultats de la recherche sont enfin mis en perspective dans une partie conclusive en faisant apparaitre les implications théoriques, managériales ainsi que les limites et perspectives de recherche. / Services are intangible and frontline employees are their face. The employees can be equipped to fulfil the implicit and explicit brand promises by internalizing brand image. In order to explore and investigate the dynamics of frontline employee Brand image alignment in service sector, this study adopted a mix method approach. A qualitative study was conducted to explore the antecedents of FLE brand alignment. A total number of 8 observations and 92 customer interviews were conducted by using Critical incident technique. Our results indicate that FLE brand image alignment is perceived through their interaction quality which consist of employee’s attitude, behaviour, expertise and appearance. Subsequently, two quantitative studies were conducted to develop and test the frontline employee brand alignment measurement. A total number of 567 responses were analysed for study 1 and 432 for study 2. A structural model was tested with outcome variables such as, brand evaluation and customer-based brand equity. Authentic employee behavior positively moderates the relationship between FLE brand alignment and outcome variables. Whereas, interaction duration negatively moderates the relationship between FLE brand alignment and outcome variables. Frontline employee brand alignment appears to be an important concept in service branding. From a managerial point of view the research tends to show that service branding is impacted by FLE brand alignment, especially the way they appear and behave. This study not only explains the concept of FLE brand alignment and develops its measurement but also proposes the determinants to measure the alignment.