Effect of Internal Branding on Brand Supporting Behaviors of Employees Regarding Customer Attraction in Islamic Banking

This paper aims to investigate the effect of internal branding on employees’ perception, brand commitment, brand loyalty and performance of banks in attracting customers, in Islamic banking. The randomly selected samples include employees of Islamic banks located in Iran. A total of 350 questionnaires were distributed to employees of Islamic banks. Internal branding was taken as the independent variable and employees’ perspective, brand commitment, brand loyalty and performance of banks in customer attraction were considered as the dependent variables. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with the LISREL software was used for hypotheses analysis. The results revealed that the organization brand is effective on brand identification from the employees’ perspective and on their brand commitment, but it has no meaningful effect on loyalty and performance of employees. The employees’ brand loyalty has a positive effect on their performance with regard to customer attraction. This is the first paper to discuss the effect of internal branding on employees’ perception, brand commitment, brand loyalty and performance of banks in customer attraction in Islamic banking. This paper also helps to emphasize the importance of internal branding for customer attraction in Islamic banking