Employees’ Brand Commitment and Career Stages : Empirical Evidence from Indian Universities

A university brand is looking to attract best-fit candidates, innovate ways to decrease the attrition and develop more sources of differentiation. In doing so, the brand aims to create and communicate employment experience to prospective candidates. Employees play a vital role in embodying a brand and thus what employees perceive about the brand is also important. Despite this, little empirical research has been conducted on what drives employees' commitment to encourage their brand-supporting behaviors. For that, 103 faculties working in the university departments of Gujarat were contacted to understand the effect of career stage on employee brand commitment. Career stage variables were classified as early-stage and mid-stage. Separate multiple regressions were run in early-stage and mid-stage to determine the differential effects. It was found that employees who are in mid-stage have higher brand commitment than employees who are in early-stage. So, HR management should develop their reward system accordingly to reinforce the brand-supported behaviors