Contact employees constitute an integral part of the consistent delivery of the firm’s brand promise on customers. Although internal brand management research stresses the importance of brand-supporting behaviours on behalf of contact employees during customer interface (Punjaisri et al., 2008), few attempts have been made to identify cognitive or affective routes through which organizations can enhance employees’ internalization of the firm’s brand values and eventually leverage their brand performance, (King and Grace, 2010). This study integrates the fit theory and the equity theory in order to address how the adoption of internal market orientation (IMO) can enhance employee brand performance within an interpersonal service setting through two different routes; by increasing their fit with different aspects of their environment and by enhancing their brand knowledge and brand identification levels. In this context, we examine whether IMO adoption promotes employee-organization fit (E-O fit), employee-supervisor fit (E-S fit) and employee-job fit (E-J fit), brand knowledge and brand identification and assess the joint impact of these variables on brand performance. This study extends present knowledge by illustrating the importance of IMO for several types of employees’ fit with their environment and by offering two different routes, a cognitive and an affective one, through which IMO adoption can promote brand performance. Third, the impact of several types of employees’ fit with their environment on brand performance is explored. To test the conceptual framework of our study we draw evidence from an interpersonal services context and particularly high-elaborate services, acknowledging that employees’ brand performance represents a significant part of customers’ evaluations of the brand within this context. This study delivers a holistic approach of brand performance within an interpersonal service context and clearly suggests two distinct but interrelated mechanisms through which contact employee brand performance can be leveraged. Our results further reveal two complementary routes through which service firms can also improve employees’ delivery of brand-consistent messages. Fostering employees’ fit with their working environment is a prerequisite before top management employs an internal branding strategy so as to reinforce contact staff to act in a brand-consistent way. Enhancing employees’ emotional attachment with the brand will promote their brand performance. Likewise, when acquiring knowledge about the brand and internalising the brand image before customer interactions, employees are expected to boost their brand performance. Although adopting an IMO has no direct influence on brand performance, IMO could strengthen the relationships the employees have with the brand and help them embrace the brand and internalize brand values; two key prerequisites for rendering contact employees as brand ambassadors.

• Achilleas Boukis(Sussex University)
• Spiros Gounaris(Strathclyde University)
• Ian Lings(Queensland University of Technology)