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1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 The research context and reasons for the research Since 2007 to the nearly years, Vietnamese commercial banks have experienced a toughly difficult stage because of many risks in traditional banking activities The Vietnamese banks have also faced up to the competitive pressure from foreign banks in experience-needed banking services as well as modern and high technological services and in retail banking.To overcome this situation, Vietnamese banks have made many strategic solutions such as raising the charter capital, improving the management capacity, enhancing the quality of their human resource, technological modernization, building and promoting the competitive advantage such as the cost advantage (through the interest rate competition), differentiating by the quality of service, using the procedure and process advantage However, these solutions’ effectiveness haven’t been shown clearly The point is that Vietnamese banks have focused on credit – deposit services and made their much more funds on banking technologies to face to these difficulties The result is that bank clerks have experienced more pressure on developing banking services from card services, deposits, credits to e-banking services Because the banking services are intangible dominant, easy to copy and banking people are the role of all banking activities, the main focus Vietnamese banks should be based on are “service people” and “ the corporate brand” These two factors make sure that Vietnamese banks have delivered competitive advantages successfully such as the service quality, the service process etc in the difficult situations in Vietnamese bank sector today However, Vietnamese commercial banks have focused on external branding toward their customers and haven’t implemented internal branding toward employees Papasolomou & Vrontis (2006) showed that the background of building a strong corporate brand in English banking sector is the employee and the internal branding Burman et al (2009) pointed out that internal branding activities have influenced directly on employee brand commitment, then employee brand citizenship behavior and the quality of customer and enterprise relationship in turn Thus, researching and developing the theorical framework about the internal brand strength in Vietnamese banking sector is very necessity Theorical framework about internal branding makes clear about the conception, the constructs of the internal brand strength, activities to develop the internal brand strength and the importance of internal branding activities in companies (Burman et all, 2009) Literature review about influencing factors to internal brand strength showed that almost researchs only focus on influencing factors to brand commitment and lack of researches about influencing factors to brand citizenship behavior (the second component of the internal brand strength) Vietnamese researches in this field are limited and focus only on the importance of the internal marketing activities There haven’t any research about influencing factors to internal brand strength in banking sector and in Vietnam which shows the research gap in theory and practices Thus, the research titled “Contextual factors affecting the internal brand strength at Vietnamese commercial banks” aims to provide more evidence and more views about the internal brand strength and internal branding at Vietnamese commercial banks, provide the theriotical framework for Vietnamese banking management consisting of brand management and human resource management in the situation that banking managers have been aware of the importance of employees and internal branding but haven’t make them come into effect 1.2 Purpose and research question - Examine contextual factors (belonging to the working environment factor group and the individual employee factor group) that affect the internal brand strength at Vietnamese commercial banks - Examine the influence (strong/ week, positive/ negative) of Relationship Orientation, Organisational Socialization, Employee Receptiveness and Needs – Supplies fit in the proposed model to the internal brand strength at Vietnamese commercial banks 1.3 The subject and the scope of the study The subject of the study includes: (1) Contextual factors which have impact on the internal brand strength at Vietnamese commercial banks and (2) The influence of Relationship Orientation, Organisational socialization, Employee Receptiveness and Needs – supplies fit to the internal brand strength at Vietnamese commercial banks - The scope of the study is defined that: (1) The study focuses on examining contextual factors belonging to the working environment factor group and individual employee factor group at Vietnamese commercial banks (2) The object of the study includes bank clerks working at Vietnamese commercial banks in Hanoi They include both functional employees in different parts at banks and managerial employees in different divisions, departments and branches at Vietnamese commercial banks Vietnamese commercial banks refer to indigenous joint-venture banks and the state bank (in which the government holds 50% of the charter capital), and not include foreign banks such as foreign joint-venture banks and 100% foreign fund banks (3) Space availability is in Hanoi because of the researcher’s limited resources (4) Study time phrase: The subject of the study is examined in the period from 2007 to 2016 when Vietnamese banking sector has been influenced by many macro and micro environmental factors 1.4 Reseach methodology 1.4.1 Research process The study has begun from the literature review both in Vietnam and in the world about contextual factors influencing a corporation’s internal brand strength The preliminary qualitative research after that has examined and apprased contextual factor affecting banks’ internal brand strength and assessed the scale items of these factors in the Vietnamese banking sector The preliminary quantitative research then has assessed the constructs of definitions and examined the application of the proposed model in the field of Vietnamese banks The official research has been designed to audit the model and examine the impact of contextual factors on the internal brand strength at Vietnamese commercial banks 1.4.2 Data collection Secondary data collection is for examining the research questions, chosing the theorical framework, proposing the research model and designing the sample Primary data collection is for exploring the research question in the Vietnamese banking sector, defining contextual factors that have influenced the internal brand strength at Vietnamese commercial banks, auditing the construct of scale items in the proposed model and completing the proposed model in the Vietnamese banking sector.The focus group and professional personal interview have been designed to find out contextual factors and complete the proposed model The quantitative research has used questionnaire surveys based on the non-ratio layered random selection by bank groups 1.4.3 Data analyzing and processing method Qualitative data was recorded then tape removed and analysed through Excel to find out qualitative groups and details by counting the repeatation of words and similarities Quantitative data was analysed by SPSS 20 with the multivariate regression analysis and Amos 20 with the Cronbach alpha analysis, EFA, CFA and SEM to audit the scale items of factors in the model and the goodness of fit of the proposed model and hypothesis 1.5 New contribution Theriotically, the research makes clear about the trend and the impact level of Relationship Orientation, Organisational socialization, Employee Receptiveness and the new factor Needs – supplies fit on the internal brand strength in the Vietnamese banking sector which there has been no research on this topic area According to that, the research has defined the application of scale items in the proposed model in the Vietnamese banking sector The research has identified the considerable differences between two bank groups including the rated bank group and the unrated bank group (by Moody’s Investor Service) in these four factors toward the internal brand strength Besides, the research has defined some extra factors belonging to the working environment factor group and the individual employee factor group that have impact on the internal brand strength in Vietnamese commercial banks Practically, the research helps the Vietnamese bank managers realize the role and the impact of working environment factors and individual employee factors especially Relationship Orientation, Organisational socialization, Employee Receptiveness and Needs – Supplies fit on banks’ brand strength in their employees According to that, the research makes bank managers control these factors to enhance the internal brand strength at their banks The research has also pointed out solutions to manage the internal brand strength through the internal branding in each bank 1.6 Structure There are 124 pages in chapters: (i) chapter 1: Introduction, (ii) chapter 2: Theoretical framework, literature review and the chosen research model (iii) chapter 3: Organise and implement the research process (iv) Chapter 4: Research result (v) Chapter 5: Conclusion and recommendation CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK, LITERATURE REVIEW AND THE CHOSEN RESEARCH MODEL 2.1 Theoretical framework 2.1.1 Services marketing trinity Froms 1970s, there has been a new perspective, that is, marketing belongs to the management aspect rather than an organizational function and the market oriented marketing management should be built based on relationships rather than transactions (Gronroos, 1996) According to that, marketing is all about organizational efforts to manage organizational relationships with the external environment consisting of customers, distributors, suppliers, partners, the government, etc It is especially expressed in the services marketing trinity Three elements in this framework include organization, employees and customers and thus include external marketing (or traditional marketing), internal marketing and interactive marketing The organization provides promises to customers and use external marketing to achieve their belief about profitable and trustful relationship To fulfill promises, the organization let their employees making use of organizational resources to conduct the communicated promises by using interactive marketing between employees and customers Thus, the responsibility of the organization is to create the ability to fulfill the promises by the internal marketing It means that the organization makes its employees comprehensively understand and believe in the relationships of the organization - employees, employees - customers and the organization – customers, let employees makes use of the organizational resoursces to convey the trustful relationship toward customers Thus, in services organizations, marketing has to arouse and promote motivation of front-office employees and back – office employees to make the team work for the high quality interaction between front-office employees and customers In fact, the internal marketing should be done before the external marketing 2.1.2 Internal marketing and internal customers in service sector All concepts about internal marketing have considered employees as internal customers The organisation’s internal market is motivated by the internal marketing to make customer oriented behaviours and service thought in employees Internal marketing is any form of marketing done in the internal organization which make its employees toward the internal activities need to be changed to enhance the interaction with the external market Internal marketing is considered as the planned effort using the marketing oriented approach to make good the organizational shortcomings and overcome obstacles to make change, encouraging and motivating for all function connection and employees connection to conduct the corporate and functional strategy effectively and creating satisfied customers due to motivated and customer oriented employees (Rafiq & Ahmed, 2000) The implication is that satisfying the employees’ demand will embrace their motivation and increase employee retention, in turn more satisfied employees will make customers more satisfied and loyal (Papasolomou & Vrontis, 2006) These approaches place the first level concern in an organization for its employees and internal marketing should cover marketing activities, human resourse management and leadership (Ahmed & Rafiq, 1995) Berry & Parasuraman (1991) considered employees as the internal customers, considered jobs as the internal products which have to satisfy the needs and demand of the internal customers These researchers considered internal marketing as the employee-like-customer relation philosophy and job-as-product strategy to satisfy employees’ demands 2.1.3 Corporate branding and brand management approaches Corporate brand is representative for a company and its tradition, values, culture, people, image and strategies (Aaker, 2004) The audience of corporate branding is not only customers but also all stakeholders such as employees, partners, supplies, shareholders, investors, governments and financial institutions, etc Corporate brand is managed by not only the operational levels of management but also the high level of management and corporate brand management is done by not only marketing department but also all efforts of the whole organization (Xie & Boggs, 2006) There are two major approaches in building and developing the corporate brand including the image-management approach and the identity-based brand management approach The imagemanagement approach is the outside-in perspective and focuses on how outside receivers accept the brand According to this approach, brand equity is derived from customers’ brand knowdledge (Keller, 2003) In contrast, the identity-based brand management approach begins their brand management from the inside people They have an in-outside perspective and focus on the brand identity and brand personality from the inside of an organization (De Chernatony, 1999, 2006) According to this approach, the brand identity is the nature and the brand identity management is the core and the major activities and thus representative for the brand image (Kapferer, 2004) The good brand identity management will lead to a good brand image in outside receivers including customers Thus, they said that an active brand management is derived from the brand identity management (Burman et all, 2009) Although this approach has not been popular until now but it is relevant that the brand equity is built from the inside (Burman et all, 2009) 2.1.4 Corporate brand strength Keller (2003) stated that the brand strength is appraised by brand-related behaviours of stakeholders (customers, employees, partners, etc) Brand-related behaviours consist of promoting the brand such as talking about the brand, introducing brand to other peoples, action in different ways to deliver the brand values to other people, buying the products/services Burman et all (2009) pointed out that the term “brand strength” is derived from the development of brand equity The brand equity is defined as present and future valorization derived from internal and external brand-induced performance The brand equity includes three major categories: psychological brand equity, behavioural brand equity and financial brand equity The conceptual proximity of the first two catergories leads to a compreshensive and widely accepted term: brand strength The brand strength includes internal brand strength in an organization’s employees and external brand strength in outside people 2.1.5 Internal brand management 2.1.5.1 The concept of the internal branding F Mahnert & M.Torres (2007) pointed out three core elements of internal branding.The first element is the reflection of brand values on customers by committed employees The second is the realization of the brand promise which is communicated to the internal and external market It’s due to the unification of the internal corporate to make the brand image come through its employees’ spiritual and mental The third element, the internal branding needs to be applied at all organization level in order to align behaviors and values of both managers and staff From this point of view, internal branding is defined as “the concerted, inter-departmental and multi-directional internal communications effort carried out in order to create and maintain the internal brand in the organization Internal branding attempts to achieve consistency with the external brand, encourage employees’ brand commitment and the propensity for brand championship among employees Internal branding is the reflection of the values and the realization of the promise of the brand internally and externally” (F Mahnert & M.Torres, 2007, p56) According to Burman et all (2009), internal branding includes three areas: (1) Brand focused leadership such as setting brand identity and brand values, building the brand vision (2) Brand focused HR such as employee education about the brand values and HR policies for promoting the brand to customers (3) Internal brand communication for making sure that employees comprehensively understand the brand values and ethors, have high brand commitment and brand citizenship behavior In general, internal branding is the internal effort to build and develop the brand inside that helps the organization achieve the coroporation between the internal and external customers It includes effective communication to employees and effective persuation about the brand values and the brand interpretation in terms of their own roles and daily routines 2.1.5.2 Internal branding management Internal branding management is divided into two stages: (1) Setting, educating and promoting brand values and brand identity In this stage, the effectiveness is under the organization’s control From the beginning, employees may or may not understand the brand, they will have a comprehensive understanding of the brand through brand education and socialization Successfully, the organization will get the employee belief and commitment, and then employees make voluntary agreement to interprete and communicate the brand identity toward outside stakeholders (2) The internal branding strategy is up to employee interpretation Employees have internalized the brand and begin to interpret the brand in terms of their own roles Employee behavior is automatically based upon the brand (De Chernatony Cottam, 2005) In this stage, the brand identity is not under the organization’s control but developed by employees’ internalisation of the brand and then epmployees’ attitude and behavior toward customers and outside stakeholders In the process of internal branding management, creating, developing and making the consistency between employee’s personal values and organization values is the key to make the success and effectiveness of the internal branding and the internal brand strength 2.1.5.3 The role of internal branding in an organization It is said that internal branding makes great impact on employees’ attitude and behaviour toward the brand by the way that it creates brand knowledge for employees and in their turn, they make the brand live in customers Internal branding will build and develop the organization image and enduring the organization – employee relationship and thus build and develop the organization image and enduring organization – customer relationship (De Chernatony & Segal-Horn, 2001; Drake et al, 2005; Kotler & Heskett, 1992; Thomson et al, 1999, Punjaisri et al, 2009) Burmann Zeplin (2009) pointed out that internal branding leads to the internal brand strength and this strength makes a positive impact on the quality of the organization – customer relationship 2.1.6 Conceptualization and the construct of internal brand strength The internal brand strength is the psychological and behavioral brand equity in the internal stakeholders (employees) A corporate brand which has interbal brand strength can make the differences and preferences in its employees in their psychology and brand-related behaviours such as loving the brand, talking about the brand, and action in different ways to deliver the brand values to other stakeholders, buying the products or services Burman et all (2009) developed internal brand strength via two related aspects: (1) employee attitude which is expressed through the identification with and the internalization of the brand identity, and (2) behaviour which is expressed in employees’ actual activities toward the brand According to that, internal brand strength is measured via two related constructs: brand commitment and brand citizenship behaviour Brand commitment was illustrated the psychological processes that lead employees to show brand citizenship behavior Brand citizenship behaviour was developed to explain the behavioural processes that employees engage in living the brand It is defined as employee behaviour that are above and beyond the norm and consistent with the brand value of the organization and then engender the brand identity, reflected through three determinants: helping behaviour, brand enthusiasm and self-development Based on the research of Burman et all (2009), King & Grace (2012) measured brand commitment and brand citizenship behaviour by the likert scale as following: Constructs of “Brand commitment”: Proud to be a part Care about fate Similar values Put in extra effort Fit in Constructs of “Brand citizenship behavior”: Take responsibility for task outside of own area Demonstrate brand consistent behavior Consider impact on brand before acting Show extra initiative to maintain brand behaviour Regularly recommend brand Pass on brand knowledge to new employees Interested to learn more about brand 2.2 Literature review about contextual factors affecting the internal brand strength 2.2.1 The model of Burman, Zeplin and Riley (2009) Burman & Zeplin (2005) and Burman et al (2009) show that Brand Commitment has a positive effect on Brand Citizenship Behaviour Both contextual factors including “corporate culture fit”’ and “corporate structure fit” were found to exercise a positive effect on Brand Commitment In the factor of “corporate structure fit”, incentive programs have the most effective on brand commitment rather than others such as information infrustruture, planning, budgeting and controlling system Employee knowhow (employee knowledge and skills) and financial resource are proved to have highly significant causal links with brand citizenship behaviour in a moderating capacity At the same time, the research showed that brand citizenship behaviour has an effective on the quality of the brand-customer relationship The employee, customer compertitor surveys at 14 companies respresenting 14 brands from different sectors in German were conducted The study used the personal interviewing process of marketing professionals who were responsible for brand management There are stages in the study In the fist stage, the expert interviews investigated the applicaion of concepts in the real situations In the second stage, employees of these 14 brands of financial services, retails, transport/tourism, telecommunications, automobile and consumer goods sectors were surveyed by questionaire to investigate the psychological constructs of brand commitment and brand citizenship behavior In the final stage, customers and key competitors of 14 brands were surveyed to determine the success factors for brand strength in terms of quality of the brandcustomer relationship 2.2.2 The model of King and Grace (2012) King & Grace’s study shows that Organizational Socialization was found to have a 10 significant positive effect on Brand Citizenship Behaviour but not Brand Commitment On the other hand, Relationship Orientation was found to have a significant positive effect on Brand Commitment, but not Brand Citizenship Behaviour Employee Receptiveness was the only one having a strong positive effect on both Brand Commitment and Brand Citizenship Behaviour The implication is that individual employee factors are more important than organizational factors in relation to employee attitude and behaviours Thererfore, organizations should recruit employees owning personal values similar to the brand values Methodology, King & Grace used the quantitative research through online surveys of service employees A random sample of 2000 email addresses from the Australian database of service employees were invited to participate in the survey and the response rate is 19% with 371 online surveys The limitation of the research is that only one individual factor (employee receptiveness) was considered and thus the conclusion about the importance of employee individual factors is not persuasive The literature review about the contextual factors affecting the internal brand strength shows the lack of studies on this issue The past studies have been done in service sector in general, and no research is done in commercial banking services at Vietnam It shows the research gap and the necessity of doing this research in the commercial banking service at Vietnam 2.3 The chosen model 2.3.1 Vietnamese banking service’s specific characteristics The chosen model was based on the Vienamese commercial banks’ specific characteristics including: (1) Risks are be ale to happen in all banking activities (2) Bank staff is very important in all banking activities.(3) Banking operational environment has a high standard of discipline and require all people to follow the rules strictly (4) Banks are usually big corporations with an imposing structure and a large number of staff The banking financial health has much impact on the banking activities 2.3.2 Analyse and choose the model The model of Burman et all (2009) did not mention the impact of Brand Citizenship Behaviour on the internal brand strength and the impact of contextual factors on the internal brand strength is not the main concern of the research King & Grace’s model (2012) focused on the impact of contextual factors on both two components Brand Citizenship Behaviour and Brand Commitment This model was tested in the services field and matched up to Vietnamese commercial banks The research focused on two contextual factor groups including the individual employee factor and the working environment factors The individual employee factor is all about Employee Receptiveness and it is the limitation of the research The working environment factors include Relationship Orientation and Organisational Socialization These two factors express the banking environment’s setting and support for its staff toward the bank brand and match up to the specific characteristics of Vietnamese banking system Thus, the model of King & Grace (2012) is chosen for the Vietnamese banking service 2.3.3 The chosen model and should-be-solved problems (1) Relationship Orientation has influenced on Brand Citizenship Behaviour or not and Organisational Socialization has influenced on Brand Commitment or not (2) Beside Relationship Orientation and Organisational Socialization in the banking environment, is there any other working environment contextual factor influencing the internal brand strength? (3) Beside Employee Receptiveness, is there any other individual employee factor influencing the internal brand strength?, (4) Compared to the individual employee factors, the working environment factors have the more or less impact on the internal brand strength? CHAPTER – ORGANISE AND IMPLEMENT THE RESEARCH PROCESS 3.1 The qualitative research 3.1.1 Purpose The qualitative research is to: (1) Examines contextual factors belonging to individual employee and working environment influencing the internal brand strength at Vietnamese commercial banks (2) Assesss the application of the chosen model in the Vietnamese banking sector (3) Assesss the nature and the influencing level of contextual factors: Relationship Orientation, Organisational Socialization and Employee Receptiveness on Brand Commitment and Brand Citizenship Behaviour toward bank brands (4) Assesss the nature and the influencing level of contextual factors which are examined from the qualitative research but out of the chosen model and related to the specific characteristics of Vietnamese commercial banks (5) Compare the impact of the individual employee factor group and the working environment factor group on the internal brand strength at Vietnamese commercial banks 3.1.2 The population of interest and the content of the survey The population of interest was employees working in Vietnamese commercial banks including bank staff (functional and managerial clerks, other-functional and marketing people front–office and back-office clerks) at departments, branches and headquarters, who were randomly selected from the list of employees The content of the survey is following: RQ1: How is a strong banking brand in the mind of employee? What should banks to make the internal brand strength? RQ2: What is banking brand commitment? And how is expressed? Are the scale items suitable for Vietnamese banks? Is there a need of addition and adjustment? How about the constructs in the Kimparkon & Tocquer’s research (2010)? RQ3: How is the brand citizenship behavior expressed and measured? Is the scale items of brand citizenship behavior suitatble for Vietnamese commercial banks? Is there a need of 11 12 addition and adjustment? RQ4: What are contextual factors belonging to working environment that have influenced the Brand Commitment and Brand Citizenship Behaviour in Vietnamese commercial banks? What is the nature of the impact on the Brand Comitment and Brand Citizenship Behaviour in Vietnamese commercial banks? RQ5: (after explaining terms and showing the constructs of scale items) How has the Relationship Orientation have influenced the Brand Commitment and Brand Citizenship Behaviour in Vietnamese commercial banks? Is there a need of addition and adjustment for the constructs in Vietnamese commercial banking sector and a specific bank? RQ6: (after explaining terms and showing the constructs of scale items) How has the Social Organization have influenced the Brand Commitment and Brand Citizenship Behaviour in Vietnamese commercial banks? Is there a need of addition and adjustment for the constructs in Vietnamese commercial banking sector and a specific bank? RQ7: What are contextual factors belonging to individual employee that have influenced Brand Commitment and Brand Citizenship Behaviour in Vietnamese commercial banks? What is the nature of the impact on Brand Commitment and Brand Citizenship Behaviour in Vietnamese commercial banks? RQ8: (after explaining terms and showing the constructs of scale items) How has the Employee Receptiveness influenced Brand Commitment and Brand Citizenship Behaviour in Vietnamese commercial banks? Is there a need of addition and adjustment for the constructs in Vietnamese commercial banking sector and a specific bank? RQ9: How have individual employee factors outside the chosen model (mentioned in the survey) influenced the internal brand strength? Explain carefully and how are the factors measured? RQ10: Compare the impact of the working environment factor group and individual employee group on the internal brand strength at Vietnamese commercial banks RQ11: How has the context of the Vietnamese banking sector from 2007 to present influenced the internal brand strength? 3.1.3 Data collection and processing Data collection is based on two methods consisting of the focus group and the in- depth personal interviews The focus group is to identify the research topic and make the interviewees clear about the similarities and the differences of factors of the chosen model The in-depth personal interviews focuses on the relationship among factors in the chosen model and make clear about the detected factors in the focus group and how they work in the specific context of each bank and each interviewee Data was recorded and tape removed both in quickview and in details, after that analysed by Excel 3.1.4 Results 4.1.4.1 Contextual factors influencing the internal brand strength at Vietnamese commercial banks The working envirornment factor group of Relationship Orientation, Organisational socialization, leadership and direct managers, and incentive scheme are considered to make impact on the internal brand strength at Vietnamese commercial banks It is recorded that Relationship Orientation in the Vietnamese banking environment need to reflect more detail relationship between an employee and another employee, an employee and his managers especially his direct manager, an employee and customers Relationship Orientation makes the strong impact on Brand Commitment and has the important influences on Brand Citizenship Behavior Relationship Orientation is confirmed to make influence on the internal brand strength in both shorterm and longterm The working mechanism between employees and their managers (leadership, behaving tradition and support system), the incentive scheme toward employees’ positive and proactive behaviours, the support system at work (teamwork, consulting forum for sharring success and working experience) and the internal communication should be focused to develop Relationship Orientation in the Vietnamese banking environment It is recorded that Organisational Socialization in the Vietnamese banking environment need to reflect managers’ support for employees’ brand citizenship behavior Organisational Socialization make the impact on both Brand Commitment and Brand Citizenship Behavior Training, working mechanism, information sharring and bank cultural traditions are recognized the most supporting factors for employees’ Brand Commitment and Brand Citizenship Behavior Leadership and especially direct managers are very important to the brand strength in employees’ minds The direct managers’ characteristics which their employees appreciate are reputation, capacity, the way to motivate employees, and behaving traditions toward employees at work Incentive scheme is highly approvedr in making the strong impact on the internal brand strength This factor includes the reward system, social welfare regime, personal-fit working environment, effective training, maternity policies and preferential product policíe for bank staff According to bank staff, the reward system is basically accepted Back-office employees see the reward as stability The reward is recognized as a steady growth in the rated bank group At the banks of the restructuring, merging and converted ownership form group, employees see the reward unstable, precarious, low and cut off Front -office employees see the reward unworthy with much difficulty, hardship, stress and high risk at work Individual employee factors include employee receptiveness, personal – work fit especially needs – supplies fit, personal psychological characteristics, personal experience with their bank brand in daily working life Employee receptiveness is expressed thorough employee’s proactive in branding activities 13 14 in their banks and being ready to receive coworkers’ contribution to improve customer services The higher employee receptiveness is, the more employees tend to participate in and intergrate the banking environment and make the active impact on brand commitment and brand citizenship behaviour The personal –bank fit was refered in different point of view: employees’ interests, the fit between personal core values and characteristics and the bank’s core values and culture, the fit between personal carreer’s working orientation and the bank development strategy The most important factor is employees’ interests in which employees perceive the relationship between their demands and all they received from their bank mainly through the reward system and working environment in relation to other employees in the same position and other postions in the bank and the other banks Through this factor, employees feel the brand values, build their brand commitment, constitute and come to action such as conveying the brand values and working for their bank brand for long time, etc This factor was recognised as the especially important factor that make the great impact on brand commitment and brand citizenship behavior both in short term and long term The employee’s personal psychological characteristic (extroverted/ introverted), personal experience with the bank brand in their daily working life are defined to make the impact to the internal brand strength The working environment group is identified to be more important than the individual employee factor group because of the working environment and specific features at each bank Brand commitment is identified to have a direct, positive and great impact on brand citizenship behaviour However, in some circumtance, converting the brand commitment into brand citizenship behaviour has been influenced by the employee knowhow and the risk level at work 3.1.4.2 New factor addition into the chosen model Vietnamese banks’ specific characteristics proves that they should focus on the people, bank staff, and the working environment factors when studying about the internal brand strength As identified, there are three cores of internal marketing which are employee demand satisfying, philosophy of behaving toward employees as customers and the job strategy as a product satisfying employees’ demand The theoretical framework of internal branding proved that building, developing and preserving the individual–orgnasational fit is very important to make the effectiveness and success for the internal branding and the identity-based brand management approach (De Chernatony Cottam, 2005) The qualitative research’s result and the theory of personal –workplace fit has identified the need –suplies fit as the most important factor and related to many other factors in the working environment Thus the need –supplies fit has been added in the model of King & Grace (2012) in my primary quantitative research 3.1.4.3 Survey measures The scale items in the survey were drawn from the scale of Burman et all (2009) and King & Grace (2012) and adjusted in Vietnamese and the banking sector 3.2 The primary quantitative research 3.2.1 Purpose The study is to examine the proposed model’s goodness of fit in Vietnamese banking sector, to test the scale items of the factors in the proposed model, to examine the nature and influencing level (positive/ negative, strong/weak) of following factors: Relationship Orientation, Organisational Socialization, Employee Receptiveness, Needs – Supplies fit on Brand Commitment and Brand Citizenship Behavior 3.2.2 The proposed model The proposed model is developed based on adding a new factor called “Needs – Supplies fit” on the model of King & Grace (2012) The hypotheses are formed based on the results of King & Grace (2012) and my qualitative results in Vietnamese banking sectors H1: Brand Commitment will have a positive effect on Brand Citizenship Behaviour H2: Relationship Orientation will have a positive effect on Brand Commitment H3:Relationship Orientation will have a positive effect on Brand Citizenship Behavior H4: Organisational Socialization will have a positive effect on Brand Commitment H5: Organisational Socialization will have a positive effect on Brand Citizenship Behavior H6: Employee Receptiveness will have a positive effect on Brand Commitment H7: Employee Receptiveness will have a positive effect on Brand Citizenship Behavior H8: Needs – Supplies fit will have a positive effect on Brand Commitment H9: Needs – Supplies fit will have a positive effect on Brand Citizenship Behavior NT Relationship Orientation Brand commitment Organisational Socialization Employee Receptiveness INTERNAL BRAND STRENGTH Brand Citizenship Behavior Needs – Supplies fit Fingure 3.1: The proposed model 3.2.3 Data collection Questionnaire survey method has been used in my research at Vietnamese banks 15 16 Respondents are working in Vietnamese banks (foreign and join venture banks excluded) According to Bollen (1989) and Hair et all (1998), in a quantitative research, a variable need observes equally to respondents There are 47 variables in the questionnaire thus the sample needs a minimum of 235 respondents The sampling probality (random selection) was applied in the primary research with total of 400 delivered questionnaires Total valid questionnaires were 247, account for 89,5% 3.2.4 Results 3.2.4.1 Scale rating SPSS software version 20 has used for testing the reliability of measuring scales with Cronbach alpha analysis and EFA CK7, CK8, CK9, CK10 and NS3, NS7 were deducted in the research result 3.2.4.2 Examining the influencing factors on the internal brand strength The result is expressed as following due to the correlation analysis and multivariate regression analysis: (1) The proposed model can be applied in Vietnamese banking sector The scale items were basically reliable (2) All factors in the proposed model have positive impact on Brand Commitment and Brand Citizenship Behaviour of the internal brand strength Relationship Orientation and Organisational Socialization have a positive effect on Brand Citizenship Behavior (3) The new factor needs – supplies fit has been recognized to be reasonable and have both influenced on Brand Commitment and Brand Citizenship Behaviour (4) Brand Commitment has a strong impact on Brand Citizenship Behaviour Relationship Orientation has a stronger impact on Brand Commitment than Brand Citizenship Behaviour Employee Receptiveness has a stronger impact on Brand Citizenship Behaviour than Brand Commitment The new factor needs – supplies fit has more impact on Brand Commitment than Brand Citizenship Behaviour The result of the correlation analysis hasn’t showed clearly the influencing level of two groups including the individual employee factor group and the working environment factor group toward the internal brand strength 3.2.5 The research model completion - The new factor Needs – Supplies Fit (NS) has been added in the proposed model - Scale items of Burman et all (2009) which is quoted in King & Grace (2012) will be used in the official quantitative research A variable is added in the scale item of Brand Commitment In the new factor Needs – Supplies Fit (NS), two variables including NS3 and NS7 are still remained in the officially quantitative research but the word “do not” is changed into “haven’t done” in these statements 3.3 The official quantitative research 3.3.1 Purpose This study: (1) examines the reasonability of the research model in Vietnamese banks (2) evaluates the reliability of measuring scale in the proposed model (3) tests hypothesis of the proposed model, evaluates the nature and influencing level of influencing factors in the proposed model on Brand Commitment and Brand Citizenship Behaviour and compare the influencing level of two groups including the individual employees factor group and the working environment group 3.3.2 Sampling method The population is staff working in the Vietnamese commercial banks in the geographic area of Vietnam including state commercial banks and join stock commercial banks and excluding foreign and jont venture banks Sampling frame is the employee list from Vietnamese commercial banks in Hanoi As the quanlitative result, the operational situation at banks and employees’ perception about bank brand depend on each bank’s credit rating (rated by international credit rating organizations).For rated banks, the ranks have changed over years from low level to medium level and it is not stable over years Thus to ensure the uniformity of the population, non-rating stratified random method has been conducted According to that, banks were divided into two groups including the rated banks group (the first group) and the unrated one (the second group) The rating was done by the Moody's Investors Service The sample size is the same at different groups Bollen (1989) and Hair et all (1998) pointed out that in a quantitative research, a variable need observes equally to respondents There are 43 variables in the questionnaire thus the sample needs a minimum 215 respondents 3.3.3 Data collection Data was collected by the questionnaire survey through face-to-face participation and by email 3.3.4 Sample profile A sample of 800 is generated, equally divided into two bank groups 622 are in response This resulted in the completion of 512 questionaires and meets the standard Felames represents the majority of the sample with 69.3% and males with 30.7% While front-offce employees reflects 64,1%, back–office ones was only marginal representation of 35.9% The under 30 age group is the largest group with 49.8%, the 31-40 age group follows with 47.7%, the 41 -50 age group accounted for 2.1% and the over 51 age group is only 0.4% The under-5-year experience employees represents of 47.5%, the 5-10 year experience employees accounts for 41.4%, the 11-20 year experience employees is the representation with 10.7% and the last is the smallest of the sample with 0.4% Employees in the rated bank group accounts for 55.3% and employees in the unrated bank group is the representation of 44.7% 3.3.5 Data analyzing method Data is processed by the software SPSS 20 and Amos 20 with Cronbach alpha analysis, EFA, CFA and SEM to evaluate the scale measuring, the reasonability of the research model and theoritical framework and test the hypotheses 17 CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH RESULTS 4.1 Scale Rating 4.1.1 Evaluating reliability of measuring scales by Cronbach’ alpha analysis As the result of evaluating reliability of scales items by Cronbach alpha analysis,two observing variables including NS3 and NS7 should be deducted from the scales items before conducting the factor analysis 4.1.2 Evaluating by EFA Results showed that from 28 independent variables factor groups can be extracted in corresponding of independent factors Extraction sums of squared loadings (or total variance explained) is 63,698% (>50%), KMO = 0,937 (>0,5) and Bartlett testing has a sig smaller than 0.05 thus EFA can be applied EFA for the definition of the internal brand strength can extract factors in corresponding of Brand Commitment and Brand Citizenship Behaviour Extraction sums of squared loadings (or total variance explained) is 54,373% (>50%), KMO = 0,905 (>0,5) Bartlett testing has a sig smaller than 0,05 thus EFA can be applied 4.1.3 Evaluating by CFA CFA for the definition “The internal brand strength” has Chi-square/df = 4,654