Today, employees in organizations are more than just functional contributors; they are becoming key stakeholders who are actively involved in promoting and shaping the organization and its reputation. When employees involve in voluntary sharing of opinions about their firm, brand or products, they tend to act as advocates and the public considers these opinions as credible and trustworthy, thus making employee advocacy (EA) critical and highly important for the organisation. Organizations should capitalize on EA behaviours as a unique marketing strategy to gain competitive advantage. The impact of EA on brands is quite clear however, the limited understanding of EA from the marketing perspective calls for a need to explore the construct further.
This study aims to address this gap by conducting four studies. Study one, using the netnographic methodology, analyses the Glassdoor reviews of employees for its sentiments using python. Study two, using Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) in python, explores the online employee reviews to identify the driving factors of EA and further develops a conceptual model. To establish the relationship between the identified factors, study 3 is conducted using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), a computer-based automatic text analysis software. Finally, study four proposes to empirically test and validate the conceptual model of EA using SEM to understand the influence of the marketing related factor on employee advocacy.
The findings from the study will theoretically contribute to the scant EA literature in marketing and would be among the few to explore online reviews of employees in the context of EA to identify factors. From the practical point of view, managers would be able to understand the marketing related drivers of EA and strategize accordingly to induce this voluntary behaviour in employees.