Brand value co-creation with employees through the Leader-Member Exchange theory: the case of a corporate brand

Abstract

Research Purpose: Employees, who are at the interface between customers and brands, play a crucial role in shaping consumers’ brand experiences that facilitate subjective and psychological meaning processes (Gambetti and Graffigna, 2015; Prahaland and Ramaswamy, 2004). The role of employees has been made more important as corporate branding involves multiple stakeholders who interact with employees across an organisation, whose behaviours influence and shape brand experiences of those stakeholders through their social interactions within the network. Hence, involving employees in brand value co-creation in the first instance could lead to positive brand experiences in different brand-stakeholder encounters.