A university brand is looking to attract best-fit candidates, innovate ways to decrease the attrition and develop more sources of differentiation. In doing so, the brand aims to create and communicate employment experience to prospective candidates. Employees play a vital role in embodying a brand and thus what employees perceive about the brand is also important. Despite this, little empirical research has been conducted on what drives employees’ commitment to encourage their brand-supporting behaviors. For that, 103 faculties working in the university departments of Gujarat were contacted to understand the effect of career stage on employee brand commitment. Career stage variables were classified as earlystage and mid-stage. Separate multiple regressions were run in early-stage and mid-stage to determine the differential effects. It was found that employees who are in mid-stage have higher brand commitment than employees who are in early-stage. So, HR management should develop their reward system accordingly to reinforce the brand-supported behaviors.

Practitioners and academicians are keen on enhancing the brand awareness, and are thus involved in brand management through market research, brand positioning and managing integrated marketing communications. In doing so, they make promises to target audience, and in turn the target customers might expect that the promises made are delivered (Burmann and Zeplin, 2005). So, for a brand to be strong, it needs to meet the promises made consistently or has to develop the credibility that customers trust.

Moreover, the role of the employees in delivering brand promises and the company’s clarifications for the employees’ expected behaviors is undeniable. Under this light, companies have to understand their employees’ perception towards the company as a brand, which is regarded as an important impetus in branding. It is assumed that the human capital brings value to the company, and through its skillful orchestration, the economic performance of a brand can be enhanced (Pfeffer, 1998). In turn, companies have begun to market their offerings to their employees to induce a long-term commitment and have started highlighting how the company is different and desirable as an employer (Backhaus and Tikoo, 2004). So, companies have begun to create a distinctive employee value proposition and communicate to employees what makes the company a desirable place to work (Jiang and Iles, 2011).

There is a growing interest in employees’ role in corporate branding. Despite the growing interest of both academics and practitioners in the ‘internal branding’, there is still a lack of research to uncover employee interactions, and service industry is no exception. Despite the intangibility and inseparability in services, a fresh look is needed to build a powerful service brand by recognizing the specific role played by the employees during service encounters (Zeithaml and Bitner, 1998). Employees are the key in creating brand meaning by performing their appropriate roles in making the brand come alive. In service branding literature, there is a belief that employees’ value, belief, attitude, and behavior reflect the brand (Kimpakorn and Tocquer, 2009).

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