Brands can be built and used by managers, but they are also strategic prerequisites that help organizations to generate more value for customers and sustainable competitive advantage among competitors (Sun & Ghiselli, 2010). A brand is the most valuable asset of every organization, and it can pave the way to gaining a more significant share of the market and more profits through proper management (Ghenaatgar & Jalali, 2016). Internal branding also plays a significant role in the weight of a company that introduces its brand to competitors and society, showing company durability in order to increase brand commitment, brand trust, and brand citizenship behavior.

Internal branding activities focusing on increasing employee awareness of, knowledge of, and commitment to their corporate brand are central for the successful implementation of company policies, such as sustainability (Baumgarth & Schmidt, 2010; Burmann & Zeplin, 2005; Foster et al., 2010). Besides, prior studies confirm that employee engagement is increased through practical internal branding activities, which helps to improve business performance (Gapp & Merrilees, 2006). Internal branding has emerged as a means to create a corporate brand by aligning employees’ attitudes and behaviors with brand commitment (Erkmen & Hancer, 2015).

Employees of a service provider could create or crush the company’s brand. On the other hand, Schultz and de Chernatony (2002) argue that organizations rely on employees to fulfil their brand promise. Moreover, according to Morhart et al., (2009), customer’s perception relies on service performance and attitude as demonstrated/performed by front liners.

An increasing number of banks is encouraging their employees to be more competitive and improve the efficacy and stability of the banking sector. Banking industry employees play vital roles, and their actions are evaluated based on certain features and the effectiveness of said actions. Hence, brand citizenship behavior should be considered to be the variable that determines customer experience in the banking industry (Ghenaatgar & Jalali, 2016). If companies display brand citizenship behaviors successfully (following their psychological contract), employee commitment and trust in the brand and the company increase.

Brand trust could be defined as the willingness of a customer to have confidence in the reliability and honesty of a specific brand (Moorman et al., 1993; Morgan & Hunt, 1994). Organizations can proactively affect the brand trust of consumers (and, likewise, that of potential and current employees). Trust in organizations differs from trust between people, as the former also covers “the organization’s institutionalized processes and principles” (Searle et al., 2011). In the customer–service provider relationship, trust has also been reported to aid the development of customer commitment (Bowden, 2014). Furthermore, trust is a fundamental aspect of genuine commitment (Hess & Story 2005).

Employee behavior is crucial for the brand’s success because the service they provide is located in the interface between brand agreement and brand delivery (Foster et al., 2010). In order to understand what is expected from employees to live the brand, Burmann and Zeplin (2005) developed the concept of brand citizenship behavior across the construct of organizational citizenship behavior. Such construct mainly states that employee behavior can enhance the fulfilment of the brand promise by including external behaviors as well as intra-organizational behaviors. According to the commitment-trust theory of relationships (Morgan & Hunt, 1994), trust is a crucial concept to explain people’s desire to stay in a long-term relationship, such as one with a brand (Erkmen & Hancer, 2015).

Burmann and Zeplin (2005) define brand commitment as the extent of psychological attachment of employees to the brand. Employee brand commitment is related to their sense of belonging (Punjaisri et al., 2017). A person who has a sense of belonging to an organization possesses a specific type of common sense by which they would then define him / herself in relation to that organization (Bhattacharya et al., 1995).

Under the category of employee characteristics, Podsakoff et al., (2000) reported that organizational commitment is what is most commonly identified as an antecedent to organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). In the case of corporate brands, brand commitment is perceived as synonymous with organizational commitment (Burmann et al., 2009). Erkmen and Hancer (2015) stated that commitment is the key to understand how employees adopt brand citizenship behaviors and behave in accordance with the brand promise. Moreover, internal commitment has been proposed as one of the main challenges for the success of branding because commitment leads employees to believe in their service brand (de Chernatony et al., 2003).

Trust, which has been proposed to be an antecedent of commitment, exists when one party has confidence in the other party’s reliability and integrity (Morgan & Hunt, 1994). Similarly, trust is also essential to improve commitment and enhance relationships within the context of branding (Bowden, 2014). Therefore, it is reasonable to argue that the brand trust of employees might also enhance their commitment to the brand. Erkmen and Hancer (2015) found that brand commitment has a direct and positive effect on employee brand trust. Based on these discussions, the following hypotheses are proposed in this work:

H1: Brand trust has a positive impact on brand citizenship behavior.

H2: Brand commitment has a positive impact on brand citizenship behavior.

H3: There is a correlation between brand trust and brand commitment.

This study shows that brand trust does not positively affect brand citizenship behavior. Such result contradicts the work by Erkmen and Hancer (2015), in which brand trust has a positive impact on said behavior. Ghenaatgar and Jalali (2016) hold that internal branding, job satisfaction, and brand commitment are predictors of brand trust. According to Özçelik and Fındıklı (2014), internal branding is associated with organizational citizenship behavior, which is similar to brand citizenship behavior.

A previous study by Piehler et al., (2016) is in line with the result in this work, where brand commitment is a predictor of brand citizenship behavior. Such study identified brand understanding and brand commitment as two scopes of brand citizenship behaviors. When employees understand the company's brand, they will try to know more and commit to the company's brand; this will encourage increased brand citizenship behavior. There are many benefits of high employee commitment to a company’s brand. One of them is that they will recommend the company as an excellent place to work to their relatives by word of mouth, which is a very low-cost promotion tool, yet very useful to attract new employees.

The findings above show that there is a correlation between brand trust and brand commitment. This result supports those obtained by Moreira and Silva (2015), which suggest that trust and commitment are essential for ensuring long-lasting relationships and diminishing the risk of anticipated opportunistic behavior (Erdem & Swait, 2004). Moreover, this result is in line with a previous work by App and Büttgen (2016). Therefore, trust in the company’s brand determines the continuity of work relationships among workers and contributes to their commitment to the company’s brand, which, in turn, supports longs-lasting relationships (Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2002; Delgado-Ballester & Munuera-Alemán, 2001; Morgan & Hunt, 1994).

A corporate leader should appropriately understand the culture, values, and norms a company has embraced. An honest, open-minded leader can inspire employees to develop brand trust. In an environment of trust and openness, employees can offer and take advice and opinions, and they can also use their aspirations to contribute to the company. When employees trust a company, the latter is expected to help them improve their work performance, which has a positive impact on the company’s brand image.

A transparent reward system is one of the demands of millennial workers. Rewards can be either financial or non-financial: bonuses, incentives, promotions, plane tickets, or even additional days off. Differentiated rewards are one of the reasons why millennial workers decide to move to another company. Therefore, equitable and transparent rewards could be a practical corporate approach to improve employee commitment.

The existence of a positive relationship between trust and commitment is essential. Moreover, in order to retain knowledgeable workers, organizations must focus on strengthening their employees’ commitment by offering rewards, recognition, better compensation, and also a better work environment. The participants in this study are employees of banking companies, and a few of them only meet each other online; therefore, their companies should provide opportunities to gather and interact face to face, not only for work-related purposes. This can promote organizational citizenship behavior among employees.

The limitation of this research is that one of the three hypotheses is not supported. Furthermore, the results show significant differences compared to a previous study by the author, where similar concepts were examined with different participants, i.e., generation Y individuals in state banking companies. It could be implied, from this study, that brand commitment positively influences brand citizenship behavior; nevertheless, further research could examine the connection between those two variables in other service industries, such as hospitality, education, or health care. This work is an attempt to find out more about the relationship between such variables.