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This study aims to investigate the brand-oriented leadership of a city’s mayor and city online brand communication as brand management-related antecedents of residents’ city brand commitment. It thus examines if city brand managers can apply internal branding concepts from the corporate branding domain in a city branding context.

The relationships between the brand management-related antecedents and the internal city branding (ICB) objective are tested through structural equation modeling using cross-sectional survey data of 414 residents of a German city.

Both the brand-oriented leadership of the mayor in terms of acting as a role model by living the city brand and its identity and by showing commitment to the brand and the city’s online brand communication in terms of its quality have positive effects on residents’ city brand commitment. Moderation analyses reveal no significant differences between the path estimates for age, place of birth, duration of residency and education. However, the results differ significantly for gender.

As this study’s sample is limited to only one city in Germany, further research needs to investigate the relationships in different cities and other countries to ensure the generalizability of the results. Future studies might also include other aspects of city brand communication, as well as cognitive and behavioural ICB objectives.

To increase residents’ city brand commitment, city brand managers should ensure that a city’s online brand communication is adequate, complete, credible, useful and clear. Furthermore, through creating awareness for the importance of a mayor’s brand-oriented leadership and through educating and training the mayor to engage in this specific form of brand-oriented transformational leadership, city brand managers can increase residents’ emotional attachment with the city brand.

This study integrates internal branding research from the corporate branding domain with place and city branding research. It confirms that certain aspects of internal branding (i.e. brand-oriented leadership, brand communication and brand commitment) are applicable not only in the corporate branding domain but also in other branding contexts such as city branding if adapted properly.

This study aims to develop comprehensive definitions, conceptualizations and measures of four internal brand management (IBM) outcomes, namely, brand understanding, brand identification, brand commitment and brand citizenship behaviour (BCB). In doing so, it also aims to propose a model, which considers the relationships across these outcomes.

Data were collected via an online survey of 375 employees who work in service organizations, sourced from an Australian, Web-based market research list.

In addition to the indirect effect of brand understanding on BCB via affective IBM outcomes (i.e. brand identification and brand commitment), the study exposes a direct effect of brand understanding on BCB. Therefore, the study shows that BCB is affected by cognitive and affective antecedents.

Because this study focuses on IBM outcomes, future studies could propose and test relevant antecedents and moderators. As the empirical basis of this study comes primarily from the tourism and hospitality industry in one domestic market, the study should be replicated in other industries and countries to ensure the generalizability of the identified relationships.

This study not only delivers IBM outcome measures but also empirically validates that employees’ understanding of the brand is a foundation for affective and behavioural IBM outcomes. Therefore, managers, especially in service organizations, should provide sufficient IBM practices to enable such brand understanding.

This study contributes to IBM literature by developing comprehensive definitions, conceptualizations and measures of four important IBM outcomes. This study is the first to include brand understanding, brand identification, brand commitment and BCB simultaneously.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of explanation and compensation, as specific accommodative management responses to negative online customer reviews, on potential customers.

The scenario-based online experiment with 306 participants investigates the effects of explanation and compensation on potential customers’ purchase intentions in the hotel segment of the hospitality industry.

The results reveal that combining an explanation with compensation is the most effective management response; providing neither an explanation nor compensation is the least effective. The effects of management responses that entail providing only an explanation or compensation do not differ significantly.

Continued research should investigate the effects of specific accommodative management responses in other service industries and other cultural settings and consider different kinds of explanations and compensation.

Hotel managers in the hospitality industry should reply to negative online customer reviews by combining an explanation with compensation. Service providers that currently lack structures and procedures to identify service failures and their causes or that cannot take corrective actions should provide compensation. Service providers that currently have limited financial resources should provide explanations.

This study analyses the effects of explanation and compensation on potential customers’ purchase intentions. In addressing the effects on potential customers, instead of on complainants, the conceptual framework represents a novel combination of management responses from service recovery research with signalling theory, the search-experience-credence framework and risk reduction methods.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of city brand benefits (cost efficiency, job chances, social life, recreation and self–brand connection) on highly skilled, potential residents’ attitudes toward the city brand.

A literature analysis and qualitative study inform a conceptual model, which is tested with structural equation modelling using 354 evaluations of the six largest German cities by 294 highly skilled, potential residents, in terms of their perceptions of city brand benefits and attitudes.

Social life and self–brand connection positively affect the city brand attitudes of highly skilled, potential residents. In contrast, cost efficiency, job chances and recreation do not affect these attitudes.

The relevance of city brand benefits might be specific to a country or culture, so further research should test the conceptual model in other settings, including smaller cities. Further studies might compare the relevance of the effects for actual and potential residents.

Social life emerged as the most important city brand benefit, so cities must ensure they offer and communicate a rich social life. Cities also should identify and communicate congruent characteristics between the city and the self-concepts of relevant target groups.

This study identifies relevant and irrelevant city brand benefits for highly skilled, potential residents. In addition, it establishes self–brand connection as symbolic benefit that previous research into potential residents has not considered.

This paper aims to study the impact of consumers’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) associations on corporate financial performance and the moderating role of market competition.

The panel data set is analyzed using a random effects regression model. The analyzed data is based on the unique RepZ Responsibility scores published by the global research agency Kantar Millward Brown and contains information about consumer CSR associations.

This study reveals CSR associations' positive, lagged, direct impact on firms’ market value. Market competition moderates this relationship in the way that a company’s market value benefits more from consumers' CSR associations when facing high rather than low market competition.

Consumers' CSR perceptions increase the market value of a company. This effect is intensified when brands are exposed to intense competition, which allows conclusions about CSR as a differentiation strategy to be drawn: To stand out in a competitive market, brands should prioritize improving their CSR associations among consumers to differentiate themselves and increase their market value.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to test the effect of consumers’ CSR associations on forward-looking financial performance measures. Moreover, by analyzing the moderating effect of market competition on the relationship between CSR associations and firms' market value, this study provides information about the differentiating power of CSR from a brand perspective using a panel-data analysis.

To further improve the branding strategies between single-brand-retailers and multi-brand-retailers, the paper investigates the influence of multiple manufacturer brand images on retailer brand image. It considers the moderating role of the number of offered manufacturer brands.

The research is conducted in the automotive retail context. Based on an online survey (383 respondents), a Partial-Least Squares Modeling, estimated using SmartPLS 3 and a classic partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) algorithm, is used to validate the hypotheses.

The results reveal that manufacturer brands did not influence the retailer's brand image in all cases since it is only influenced by the manufacturer brand when the retailer offers only one manufacturer brand.

For retailers offering only one manufacturer brand, the most extensive possible adoption of the corporate identity (CI) specifications prescribed by the manufacturer brands is the prerequisite for a positive image effect. Retailers offering more than one manufacturer brand should create their image based on the retailer's identity. In this context, it is essential to position the retailer brand independently in the market.

This is the first study focuses on retailers with a small or limited number of offered manufacturer brands to answer the question of whether the number of provided manufacturer brands moderates the impact of manufacturer brand images on the retailer's brand image.

This study aims to investigate the influence of advertising value and privacy concerns on consumers’ intention to use location-based advertising. It also explores if brand trust toward location-based advertising providers and consumers’ privacy self-efficacy reduce privacy concerns.

Based on the privacy calculus and expectancy theory, a conceptual model is developed and empirically tested through structural equation modeling using cross-sectional data of 1,121 actual smartphone users from Germany.

Advertising value positively and privacy concerns negatively affect consumers’ intention to use location-based advertising. As expected, brand trust and consumers’ privacy self-efficacy can reduce consumers’ privacy concerns.

Further research should test and validate the proposed framework in other cultures to gain insights into the culturally specific relevance of privacy concerns and their antecedents. The current study includes sociodemographics as potential moderators; additional studies could investigate other potential moderators (e.g. personality, values).

To reduce consumers’ privacy concerns, location-based advertising providers should make their offers transparent and give consumers control, to increase their privacy self-efficacy. They also should work to strengthen their brand, monitor brand trust trends and avoid any trust-damaging behavior.

This study introduces brand trust toward location-based advertising providers and privacy self-efficacy as factors to reduce consumers’ privacy concerns. It also encompasses a broader, general sample of consumers, which increases the generalizability and practical relevance of the results and supports an initial investigation of sociodemographic factors as potential moderators in this context.

This paper aims to investigate word of mouth as a consequence and information, entertainment, social interaction and remuneration motivations as antecedents of consuming, contribution and creating behaviours as consumers’ online brand-related activities (COBRAs).

As an empirical test of the proposed conceptual model, the quantitative research features an online survey of a sample of 359 German Facebook users.

Word of mouth benefits from consuming behaviour but not contributing or creating behaviours. Therefore, brand-related outcomes can be realised solely through the consumption of brand-related content. Consuming behaviour is positively affected by social interaction and entertainment motivations.

Further research could investigate the conceptual model in other social networks, as well as validate the findings in other cultural settings. Potential moderators also should be considered in further research.

In addition to tracking contributing and creating behaviours, brand managers should measure consuming behaviour. This paper provides new insights into how consumer motivations influence different COBRA types.

This study is the first to analyse the distinct effects of consuming, contributing and creating behaviours of SNS brand page followers on word of mouth as an offline brand-related consequence. It also represents the first study to investigate the unique effect of creating behaviour on an offline brand-related outcome. Furthermore, this study is the first to analyse the effects of all four types of motivations on any COBRA type quantitatively with an appropriate statistical analysis that allows distinguishing relevant from irrelevant motivations.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model of brand authenticity and analyze the antecedents and effects of the construct. Although there is no doubt about the relevance of authenticity in personal relationships, published research has yet not thoroughly explored the concept’s meaning in reference to brands.

Based on socio-psychological attribution theories and grounding on the identity-based brand management approach, a causal model of brand authenticity is developed. The hypothesized relationships are analyzed using the partial-least-squares approach. The primary data are based on an online survey conducted in Germany (n = 600). The respondents were asked about fast-food and beer brands.

The data show that brand authenticity positively impacts on brand trust. Furthermore, the key antecedents in the model (consistency, continuity and individuality of a brand) drive the perception of brand authenticity as hypothesized.

The model should be tested in further product categories and moderators should be integrated.

The findings suggest that authenticity is perceived when a brand is consistent, continuous and individual in its behavior. Nevertheless, the empirical results indicate that the factor individuality has the lowest influence on perceived brand authenticity. This is an interesting finding, as being “unique” is commonly regarded as an important success factor in branding. Although the study’s findings confirm its relevancy, they relativize its importance: being consistent, meaning that a brand fulfills its brand promise at every brand-touch point, and being continuous, meaning that the brand promise reflects the essential core of the brand, are of major importance.