Sustainable Brand Management: The Role of Internal Brand Management and Intrinsic Motivation in Building Employee’s Brand Relationship Quality towards Organization’s Brand

The current discussion about the brand is how to sustain it, and previous sustainable brand management studies consisting of an outside-in approach have been carried out. However, an inside-out approach that may help sustain the brand internally also plays a significant role towards brand sustainability, but limited studies explore it. Hence, underpinned by Social Exchange Theory, this study proposes a comprehensive model of sustainable brand management from an internal perspective, which depicts that internal brand management activities (i.e., communication, training, and leadership) and intrinsic motivation factors (i.e., job autonomy, competence, and relatedness) affect employee brand relationship quality of the organization’s brand. Data is collected from 499 staff from various Higher Education Institutions in Pakistan and assessed from structural equation modelling of Smart-PLS. The findings show that communication, training, competence, and relatedness positively affect employee brand relationship quality. At the same time, leadership and job autonomy do not affect employee brand relationship quality. Therefore, focusing on Knowledge Capital, Social Capital, and Emotional Capital is crucial in sustaining the brand from inside the organization via employees as the brand ambassador. This research also expands the Social Exchange theory by including an internal perspective on sustainable brand management.