Employee branding dimensions and brand citizenship behaviour: exploring the role of mediators in the hospitality context

Purpose Relying on social identity and social exchange perspectives, the present study aims to investigate the role of employee branding dimensions in stimulating employees’ brand citizenship behaviour (BCB) directly and indirectly through job satisfaction and affective brand commitment. Design/methodology/approach A field-survey method was used to target customer-contact employees of luxury chain hotels. Regression-based approach and bootstrap method (via PROCESS MACRO, Model 6) were applied to test the direct and indirect effects. Findings The results show that perceived external brand prestige has a strong direct effect on BCB. Through mediation analysis, this study observes that job satisfaction and affective brand commitment have significant mediation effects (i.e. individual, parallel and sequential) between employee branding dimensions and BCB. Analysing the results precisely, job satisfaction and affective brand commitment have the lowest sequential mediation effect and the greatest parallel mediation effect concerning the said relationships. Originality/value This study is novel in applying a three-path mediation model in the Indian hospitality context, considering a multi-dimensional perspective of employee branding to capture its diverse impact on BCB directly and indirectly through job satisfaction and affective brand commitment. Moreover, this study advances employee branding research by considering the under-investigated mediating (individual, parallel and sequential) role of job satisfaction and affective brand commitment.