KOREASCHOLAR

This research tends to answer the following question: How do multinational corporations transmit their service brand to the local employees of the host country? Service brand has been discussed from the point of internal marketing, which ensures that employees can demonstrate the authentic value of the service brand in their attitudes and behaviors. However, when a corporation attempts to transmit the service brand across borders, there needs to be a balance between globalization and localization. This research intends to build a systematic internal marketing mechanism from the viewpoint of internal marketing, international service branding and subsidiary brand-specific transformational leadership. This study uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to conduct an in-depth case study and questionnaire survey. This research provides the following theoretical and managerial contributions. Firstly, it proposes a systematic internal marketing mechanism to transmit the service brand across international borders. This includes a brand-specific leadership with cultural sensitivity, a brand norm positively led by the leader and an organizational learning system, which influences the practice of the brand norms. Secondly, in order to transmit the international service brand successfully, this paper argues that subsidiaries’ leaders should have cultural sensitivity and demonstrate a brand-specific transformational leadership style. Thirdly, the paper finds and verifies that brand-specific transformational leadership has a positive effect on the brand norms and organizational learning, which in turn affect employee brand behavior and attitude toward the company’s core brand value. Managerially, the systematic internal marketing mechanism developed by this research can enlighten those service companies who intend to expand their international scope and ascertain their service brand value is transmitted accurately and executed locally.

• Chan Hsiao(National Chiao Tung University)
• Yi-Hsuan Lee(National Central University)
• Yuh-Ting Chih(National Central University)