Internal Branding in the Gig and Sharing Economy: Enhancing Service Providers’ Engagement to Achieve Higher Customer Satisfaction

Abstract

Traditional service industries rely on internal branding and employee engagement to ensure their employees deliver their brand promises. However, they are evolving into more on-demand work than ever before. Both gig and sharing economy (GE&SE) platforms enable individuals to provide on-demand services. Although those service providers (SPs) are not employed by GE&SE platforms, consistent delivery of brand promises by the SPs is crucial in GE&SE too. Thus, we aim to investigate the importance of internal branding in GE&SE as a key factor in achieving higher customer satisfaction by analyzing the SP’s engagement to the brand. Accordingly, we develop a comparison framework and conduct nine interviews with SPs, which we then analyze by means of a cross-case analysis. The results show that internal branding practices can play an important role in enhancing the SPs’ engagement levels. Moreover, highly engaged SPs will go the extra mile to satisfy the customers’ needs.