Dear Shoaib, I am sure that you are already aware of the works of Burmann/Zeplin (2005, JBM), Burman/Zeplin/Riley (2009, JBM) and Burmann/Jost-Benz/Riley (2009, JBR). There is also a publication which might be interesting to you but which was written in German:

Wentzel, D., Tomczak, T., Kernstock, J., Brexendorf, T., & Henkel, S. (2009). Der Funnel als Analyse-und Steuerungsinstrument von Brand Behavior. In Behavioral Branding (pp. 81-99). Gabler.

In a chapter that I wrote in Nicklas Ind latest book (Branding Inside Out) I refer to the idea of the brand behavior funnel which includes employees’ brand knowledge. Maybe this helps as well.

Of course, if you provide good arguments, you can treat EBK as a mediator, even if others haven’t done so.

Good luck with your research.

Holger

hello Dear Prof. Holger Schmidt ,

Thank you so very much for prompt reply and comprehensively reply to my earlier query. As you rightly mentioned the works of Prof Burmann, Zaplin and Riley etc. I read their work and research papers with great interest and in depth also. Actually as you replied to me in the very end that I can use EBK as a mediator if i provide good arguments. I totally agree with you. actually i wanted to examine the role of EBK with the relationship between internal brand communication and employee brand consistent behavior. in this regard I tried to search first if EBK is ever used as a mediator or moderator but unfortunately i could not find it. and it surprised me a little bit as well. one of the outcomes of internal branding is employees accumulated knowledge about firms' brand. the higher the brand knowledge higher their performance would be. but surprisingly EBK construct still has not been used either as a moderator or mediator.

Prof. Holger if I share my work with you and you guide me how to incorporate EBK as a mediator we can publish a good empirical paper. As for my pilot study I collected 100 Sample of respondents from Banking sector of both Pakistan and Malaysia. so it would be good to work on it and publish a empirical paper on it at this stage. secondly I am in the data collection stage so by next month hopefully i will collect the required sample size for my PhD thesis.

Taking this precious opportunity I wanted to ask do you think its good idea to incorporate Employee brand orientation in to my internal branding model as this idea presented well only recently by King and Su, in their 2013 paper.

Prof. if you could provide me your Skype ID I would be very grateful to you as i will share more regarding my thesis...

Once again thank you so very much for replying to my query. I am highly obliged to you Sir.

have a good day!

Warmest Regards

Shoaib Khan

PhD Marketing Researcher

UUM Malaysia

Hi Shoaib,

Based on your initial question, there are three variables you talk about: Internal Branding Practices (IBP), Employee Brand Knowledge (EBK), and Brand Citizenship Behaviour (BCB).

However, in your answer to Prof. Holger Schmidt, you now focus on examining the role of EBK with the relationship between Internal Brand Communication (IBC) and Employee Brand Behaviour (EBB). According to your suggestion, it seems IBC --> EBK --> EBB.

As Prof. Holger indicated, if you have strong arguments to place EBK as a mediating variable, then you can go on, since it is the matter of presenting our arguments in Social Science Research. If you find hard to get any literature relatively, it is very strong evidence to conduct your study that there is a gap in the literature as these relationships are not investigated.

If you have argued perfectly, then it is very important how you will devise and decide your questionnaire, targeted respondents, and method of analyses to be placed as consistent with your research problem, objectives and hypotheses.

Hope this will give you something to clear your doubt. Good luck in your studies.

Dear Samithamby Senthilnathan,

Thank you very much responding to my query. I am very grateful to you in this regard. your and Prof. Holger J. Schmidt replies really boosted my confidence and I hope your answers would help me to think critically and as you rightly pointed out that it depends on our arguments how we present them in our writing ups. I will do my best to come up with some strong arguments, evidence and justification to support my research framework.

Once again thank you so very much for providing me valuable advice and suggestions.

Best wishes to you and good luck with your up coming research projects.

Thank you and have a good Day !

Warmest Regards,

Shoaib Khan

UUM Malaysia

Dear Shoaib Khan,

If you like, you can send me your Conceptualisation with your model in word format. I can contribute to your study by revising it, if you prefer and require.

Good luck.

Regards,

Dr S Senthilnathan