With the advent of globalization and the accompanying rapid changes in economic environments, firms have gradually transformed their mode of operations from one based on the traditional good-dominant logic to one based on service-dominant logic. The emergence of service-dominant logic has resulted in the development of value co-creation, which refers to the process through which firms, suppliers, and customers all become involved in the discovery and creation of product value and create added value through even and reasonable distribution. Drawing upon the SDT theory, the current study has the following three research objectives. First, the current study investigated the influence of transformational leadership on employee-based value co-creation and the impact of transformational leadership on employees’ intrinsic motivation to further enhance their value co-creation. Second, this study sought to understand the mediating mechanisms between transformational leadership and employee-based value co-creation; financial and non-financial variables were used as the mediators to explore whether the financial incentive affects employees’ intrinsic motivational process with regard to the transformational leadership that leads to employees’ intrinsic motivation. Third, positive psychological capital was used as a mediator to examine whether it mediates the relationship between the financial perspective and value co-creation. Fourth, self-concordance was also adopted to examine whether self-concordance mediates the relationship between the financial perspective and value co-creation. We collected 513 survey responses from 81 teams in firms from diverse industries in Taiwan. The present study makes the following contributions. First, previous research related to leadership behavior primarily focused on the influences of leadership behaviors on employee attitudes and behaviors. Only a few studies addressed the impact of leadership on value co-creation. Drawing on the self-determination theory to build our research framework, our study contributes to the field by investigating how transformational leadership stimulates employee-based value co-creation. Second, the present study investigated the psychological mechanisms involved in the motivational process in the context of the ways in which transformational leadership facilitates changes in employee behavior, particularly for employees’ intrinsic motivation. Third, the present study proved that financial and non-financial incentives respectively mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and positive psychological capital. Additionally, both financial and non-financial incentives mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and self-concordance. These results suggest that both financial and non-financial incentives could be effective ways for transformational leaders to intrinsically motivate their employees. These findings are valuable contributions to the leadership studies field. Fourth, the present study adopted hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to conduct a multi-level analysis of the relationship between transformational leadership and value co-creation.

This study incorporates brand equity and brand identity, two vital factors influencing customer-brand perception, to explore the process from service recovery to perceived justice. This study adopted HLM as the research framework because brand perception differs at various levels and adopting HLM allows us to precisely understand the influence of brand identity and brand equity on the relationship between service recovery and perceived justice. The contributions of this study are listed as follows: a) online service recovery can positively affect customer-perceived justice; b) brand equity at the organizational level can undermine the relationships that courtesy and compensation have with perceived justice; c) brand identity at the individual level can undermine the relationships that courtesy and compensation have with perceived justice; and d) using hierarchical linear modeling can precisely measure the relationship between organizations and customers; therefore, this method is innovative and can contribute to the research on online service recovery.

Brand equity (BE) previously focused on consumers’ perceptions under brand marketing stimuli, they often used financial performance indicators for evaluating brand value (Aaker,1996;Keller,1993). However the primary stakeholders of a service brand are employees (Brexendorf & Kernstock,2007).Thus, the enhancement of employee- based BE could be an important topic for in-depth investigation in the fields of brand and internal marketing. Morhart (2009) was the first to introduce the concepts of brand-specific transformational leadership (TFL) and brand-specific transactional leadership (TRL) based on employees’ brand-building behavior. Theory asserts that leaders should endeavor to influence employees through the internalization of brand values and a brand-based role (Morehart,2001) . In the process of brand internalization, leaders with brand experience and brand knowledge should also uphold and constantly reaffirm brand values because they're more capable than ordinary leaders to clearly convey brand values (Hoffman,1999). For this reason, brand-specific leadership based on employee brand-building behaviors is the focus of this study. This study adopts hierarchical linear modeling for individual and organizational-level analyses. This research to investigate (1)whether TFL and TRL have directly affect employee-based individual-level BE.(2)whether TFL and TRL have indirectly affect employee-based BE as an individual-level mediator.(3)how managers use brand-specific leadership to elicit employees’ perceived brand value congruence for improved employee-based BE.

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.

This study examines the effect of brand-specific transformational leadership (BSTL) on employee-based brand equity (EBBE) with the mediating mechanism of empowerment. We explore the newly emerging concept of ‘employee based brand equity’ particularly from the perspective of brand-specific transformational leadership in the service industry. Furthermore, we explore the perspective of empowerment, structural and psychological empowerment, as the mediating mechanism between BSTL and EBBE. We highlight the direct and indirect effects of BSTL on EBBE and employs hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). 578 questionnaires were collected from multilevel data of subordinates and their supervisors at 58 well-known service brand units in Taiwan. Our research results implicate that: (1) BSTL is positively related to employee base brand equity; (2) Structure empowerment is a mediator factor of BSTL and employee base brand equity relationship; (3) Psychological empowerment is a mediator factor of BSTL and employee base brand equity relationship. This study presents three key contributions. This study provides the following research contributions: (a) In contrast to previous studies that focused on customer brand equity, we initiate the quantitative research of research on frontline employee based brand equity. (b) This study suggests and confirms that BSTL influences EBBE through the mediation of structure empowerment and psychological empowerment, which further contributes to EBBE research. (c) Finally, this study applies a hierarchical linear model to conduct a cross-level analysis of EBBE. Consequently, this study provide evidence supporting the previous assertion that comprehensive insight into service organizational behaviors can be achieved only by employing cross-level analysis and mediating factors.

This study explores the relationship among brand experience, consumer satisfaction and brand loyalty with virtual experience and the virtual community as the intervening variables. We intend to discuss how the new concept of ‘brand experience’ impacted by the internet environment. We integrate the following new research subjects together: brand experience, virtual experience and virtual community. As the research purpose is to understand the effects of virtual environments on brand experience on consumer satisfaction and on brand loyalty, it takes virtual experience as the intervening variable to discuss whether it positively or negatively influences the relationship between brand experience and consumer satisfaction, and takes the virtual commodity variable as the intervening variable to discuss whether it positively or negatively influences the relationship between consumer satisfaction and brand loyalty. This study takes the virtual community members of apple brand in taiwan as the research subjects and 516 questionnaires were completed and returned. The results show that the brand experience had a positive effect on the consumers’ satisfaction and brand loyalty. In addition, the virtual experience has a positive moderating effect on the relationship of brand experience and consumer satisfaction. Finally, this study also discovered that the virtual community also has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between consumers’ satisfaction and brand loyalty.