The impact of sustainable internal branding on teaching staff’s commitment: application on private higher education institutions

Abstract

This study aims to extend the boundary of knowledge about internal branding, which touches on two disciplines: marketing and human resources management in an attempt to understand the constructs of internal branding and their impact on the commitment of service providers (higher education teaching staff members) so that they support the brand promise of the university and maintain a competitive edge for private universities in Egypt that function in a very competitive market. Data were collected from 402 members of teaching staff to test the proposed model and hypotheses using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results prove the fitness of the suggested model and that the constructs of internal branding (supervisory support, effective internal communication, clear vision and values) do have a significant impact on teaching staff commitment except for the construct of directed training programs (DTP), contrary to previous literature which might be because teaching staff commitment may require variables other than training programs which in turn rings a bell for private universities' management to partially reconsider the budgets directed to training for teaching staff or it could be due to cultural differences as previous literature was mostly conducted in different cultures, thus a value addition of this study.