DISCUSIÓN

The results of this study offer a number of implications for service firms in general and managers in service branch managers focusing on building a strong service brand. These services can include professional services such as legal and medical services. These services feature high credence qualities, high degrees of customer contact and customisation, and high interdependence between customers and service providers for co-creating favourable outcomes (Chan et al. 2010; Auh et al. 2007; Lovelock 1983; Sharma and Patterson 2000).When building a strong service brand is the underlying objective of employee brand building behaviours, BSTFL is a leadership style that can make a difference. BSTFL is a key driving force for motivating and empowering frontline employees to engage in brand building behaviours. The empowerment of followers is often presented as one of the main features that distinguish transformational leadership from other

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leadership styles such as transactional leadership, which does not seek to empower the followers but merely to influence their behaviour (Kark et al. 2003). By adopting BSTFL, managers encourage employees to make independent decisions regarding the various challenges they face and to make their work more personally meaningful (Zhang & Bartol 2010). Further, because BSTFL includes empowering behaviours such as delegation of responsibility to followers, enhancing followers’ capacity to think on their own, and encouraging them to come up with new and creative ideas (Dvir et. al. 2002), employees will be empowered to act as brand ambassadors. In addition, managers should be mindful of not only an individual frontline employee’s perception of the brand specific transformational leader, but also the branch’s (team members) perception of that leader. That is, this study also submits that if there still a lack of engagement in employee brand building behaviours, brand specific transformational leaders can still form an initiative climate in the branch to support an employee “reason to” motivation grow into his or her roles as a brand builder. For example, in the dynamic business environment nowadays, there are often unforeseen changes in task demands along with unexpected situations that require employees’ self- directed actions (Hong et al. 2015). As a result, it is unlikely that service managers will elicit desired employee responses through formal control. Therefore, through brand-specific adaptation of idealised influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualised consideration, managers can form a shared perception of an initiative climate that signals to employees to take personal initiative as brand builders. This shared perception of initiative climate guides employees to show brand building behaviours toward achieving higher levels of service brand performance. Therefore, managers in service firms

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and especially in branches should adopt this style of leadership when trying to motivate employees brand building behaviour. This is also important because managers in branches are authentically living the brand values.

Further, if internal culture or communication deviates from external marketing communications, employees might suspect the promoted brand image is a lie and does not genuinely embody the values it says it stands for in its positioning (Löhndorf & Diamantopoulos 2014). Accordingly, employees will lose their desire or reasons to engage in brand building behaviours because they will feel that they are the victims of that lie. Therefore, service employees need to perceive their service brand as authentic to be brand builders and exhibit brand oriented behaviours. This study provides strong evidence that managers adopting BSTFL in branches can play an important role in enhancing employee’s perceptions of brand authenticity which in turn enhances employee brand building behaviours.

In addition, the findings of this study strongly suggest that psychological empowerment plays a critical role in linking BSTFL to employee brand building behaviour. The mediating role of psychological empowerment implies that when leaders execute BSTFL’s behaviours, frontline employees will be more knowledgeable and empowered to engage in brand building behaviour because their ability or “can do” toward work carries over into how they grow into their roles as brand builders. Therefore, brand specific transformational leaders can empower employees to understand their service brand’s promise and its implications for their work, how to communicate brand identity and establish personal pride in their service brand, and motivate them to grow into their roles as brand builders (Morhart et al. 2009; Vallaster & de Chernatony 2006; Wieseke et

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al. 2009). This suggests to managers in branches where BSTFL is implemented, need to monitor the level of can do and reason to motivations of frontline employees in order to manage employee brand building behaviours effectively.

Interestingly, the field experiment by Morhart et al. (2009) shows that managers can learn to be brand specific transformational leaders through management training. Therefore, service firms need to provide training and education to branch managers. In doing so, they can use internal communication and an open discussion with the branch managers about those specific behaviours required to enact BSTFL and engage in training to act as role models. This could include, using branding books and storytelling, to show the branch managers how to direct and guide employee’s behaviours to be brand builders.

Finally, in order to ensure that managers behave as brand specific transformational leaders and that frontline employees respond effectively to it, they need to measure the outcomes suggested by this study. This study provides managers in branches with a measure of service brand performance. Service brand performance can be regarded as a diagnostic tool to evaluate whether the branch is in a situation to support the development of a strong service brand. Therefore, managers can monitor their service brand strength by assessing number of customer, sales, profit and overall service brand performance. Further, managers can also monitor in-role brand building behaviours, participation and advocacy of frontline employees to ensure that employee behaviours are consistent with service brand values and do not undermine the credibility of advertised messages. If employee brand building behaviours are inconsistent with service brand values, managers also can evaluate both psychological empowerment and perceived brand authenticity of their employees to ensure that employees have both can do

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and reason to motivations to be brand builders. In addition, if employees are not empowered and do not perceive their service brand as authentic one, managers should evaluate their leadership behaviours through assessing BSTFL at both branch and individual levels.