Do Employees Purchase from Employers? The Role of Psychological Contract Fulfilment and Employee Brand Identification
(A2025-126058)

AUTHORS

Gordhan Kumar Saini, Tata Institute of Social Sciences; Mukta Srivastava, T A Pai Management Institute Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India

ABSTRACT

Literature on psychological contract and employee brand identification is concentrated on human resources (HR) outcomes and benefits, ignoring their boundary-spanning benefits. Drawing on psychological ownership theory, in this paper, we examine the role of psychological contract and employee brand identification in explaining employer-brand patronage, one of the non-HR outcomes. The partial least squares structural equation modelling was applied to analyze the data collected from a sample of 301 service sector employees and test the hypotheses. The results shows that psychological contract fulfilment favorably influences employer-brand patronage directly as well as indirectly through employee brand identification. Employee brand identification is the key psychological mechanism that partially explains employer-brand patronage. This paper contributes to scarce research at the intersection of psychological contract, employee brand identification and employer-brand patronage.