Two Perspectives Study of the 4Ps of Brand Leadership for two African Brands: Effect of Employee Customer Oriented Behaviours and Brand Admiration

Abstract

A Brand leader is viewed in four dimensions of being relatively superior in the marketplace (brand quality), provides relatively high financial value compared to costs (brand value), is relatively open to new ideas and solutions (innovativeness) and has high brand awareness, preference and consumption (popularity). Being a brand leader brings a myriad of both financial and non-financial benefits, such as customer and employee brand admiration, profitability, and market share. Dangote and DSTV are consistently ranked as two of the top admired and brand leaders in Africa, but research is yet to be conducted as to the varied determinants of the brand admiration and leadership. Considering that African brand leaders are diverse in terms of the person and people behind the brand, segments they serve, the product and services that they offer and the place/country of origin, this study develops and tests these aspects into 4Ps of brand leadership (person, people, product and place). Guided by the social exchange, social identity, and brand-specific leadership theories, this study integrated ideas from Aaker et al. (2012), Park et al. (2016) [for product factors], and elements of the models of Adehn et al. (2016) [for place factors], Tuan (2012) [for person factors], Löhndorf and Diamantopoulos (2014) [for people factors] and Chiu and Cho (2021) [for the four dimensions of brand leadership] to examine the product, people, person and place (4Ps) factors impacting brand admiration and resultant brand leadership of Dangote and DSTV brands. An integrated conceptual model was developed that was to be tested in two perspectives. The person factors (brand specific transactional and transformational leadership) and the people factors (employee-brand fit, employee brand knowledge, employee brand belief, employee brand congruent behaviour, perceived organizational support and organisational identification) were hypothesised to first impact employee customer-oriented behaviour before influencing the four dimensions of brand leadership through brand admiration. The product factors (enabling, enticing and enriching benefits, warmth and competence) and place factors (product and service availability, basic country image, product-country image, category-country image) were hypothesised to impact brand admiration and in turn influence the four dimensions of brand leadership. A positivism philosophy with quantitative methods was used for data collection and analyses and to test the employee and customer models. After assessing and confirming measurement model for reliability and validity, a partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) with SMART-PLS V4 was used to test the models and hypotheses considering the multi-variate nature of the relationships. The results showed that for Dangote employees, only perceived organisational support (people factor) significantly impacted employee customer-oriented behaviour. Because of low Dangote employee sample size (i.e., 143), most of the relationships were not significant. For DSTV, and with a higher employee sample size (i.e., 169), four people factors (i.e., employee-brand fit, employee brand knowledge, employee brand belief, and perceived organizational support) and one person factor (i.e., transactional leadership) significantly impacted employee customer-oriented behaviour). Additionally, and for only DSTV employees, brand admiration significantly impacted all four dimensions of brand leadership. In v terms of Dangote customers, brand admiration was influenced by only functional product factors of brand competence and enabling factors and place factors of product and services availability and product country image. Dangote customers brand admiration significantly impacted all four dimensions of brand leadership. For DSTV customers the 4Ps that significantly influenced admiration were person factors (customer appreciation of brand-specific transactional leadership); people factors (customer appreciation of employee customer-oriented behaviour); product factors (brand warmth, enabling and enriching benefits) and place factors (product and service availability, basic country image, and category-country image). DSTV customers brand admiration also significantly impacted all four dimensions of brand leadership of brand quality, value, popularity and innovativeness. Multigroup analyses conducted should that there were some significant differences in how some 4Ps factors impacted brand leadership though brand admiration from customers perspective and not employee perspective. The customer perspective model of Dangote explained 73% of changes in brand admiration, 23.8 % of brand innovativeness, 23.1% of brand popularity, 42.9% of brand quality and 12.2% of brand value. Conversely, the customer perspective model of DSTV explained 88.1% of brand admiration, 62.5% of brand innovativeness, 31.4 % brand popularity, 48.8% of brand quality and 45.4% of brand value. The explanatory powers of the employee models were weak probably because of the low sample size and the many constructs deleted from further analyses. This study makes theoretical and practical contributions. Theoretically it makes interdisciplinary contributions into the fields of brand management, human resource management and consumer behaviour. It develops the first 4Ps of brand leadership by demonstrating the pathway through which brand leadership can be gained from employee and customer perspectives and through employee customer-oriented behaviour and brand admiration. The 4Ps and the integrated models can be used to identify determinants of brand admiration and leadership for other leading brands in Africa, emerging economies and developed countries. Practically the managers of leading brands can get insights into important people, person, product and place factors that can drive brand admiration and leadership. For example, and for employee perspective, it was found that perceived organizational support is important for both Dangote and DSTV if employee customer-oriented behaviour (ECOB) is to be achieved. ECOB is a good determinant of customer brand admiration and resultant brand leadership, especially shown in the case of DSTV. In the customer perspective, enabling benefit and product and services availability which are all functional product and place factors are common and important factors if brand admiration and resultant brand leadership are to be achieved.