Crafting and testing a central precept in service-dominant logic: Hotel employees’ brand-citizenship behavior and customers’ brand trust

Employees play an important role in hotel service branding. Their enactments of positive brand-supportive behaviors help nurture positive customer–brand relationships. This study explores the relationship between employee perceived organizational support, brand citizenship behavior, and customers’ perceptions of brand trust. Two questionnaire surveys were carried out in high-contact hotel service firms collecting employee and customer data by matched-questionnaires. The results of the study indicate that brand-citizenship behavior consists of three components: willingness-to-help, brand enthusiasm, and propensity for further development. Propensity for further development has a significant direct positive effect on the other two components, and the other two components both have significant direct positive effects on customer's brand trust. Employee-perceived higher levels of organizational support increase performance of brand citizenship behavior. The study includes empirical findings, contributions to theory, limitations, and direction for future research.