Prior brand experiences affect job seekers’ application decisions, as they recall service encounters with brands which they have experienced as customers. As brand representatives, service employees play a critical role in these recollections. Their behaviour might inform job seekers’ understanding of the employer brand, thereby affecting their application decision. The impact of the service employee’s behaviour might be even more impactful if this behaviour is branded, meaning that the employee’s appearance and manner are representative of the brand values. In this paper, we analyse whether and how branded service employee behaviour affects job seekers’ application intentions. We argue that branded service employee behaviour provides two opposing signals: it contributes to consistent evaluations of the brand, leading to more brand trustworthiness and enhancing job seekers’ application intentions. However, it may also be perceived as inauthentic, reducing job seekers’ application intentions. Findings from a scenario experiment provide evidence of both effects.

Purpose Numerous service organizations involve employees in strengthening customer relationships. While the literature has emphasized the importance of a sustainable market orientation (SMO) for an organization’s image, it has not explored how employees’ behavior in sustainable service organizations influences the reputational effect. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of SMO-aligned employee behavior on customer attitude and behavior, while considering different SMOs and the role of value-based brand choice. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a 2 (SMO-aligned vs nonaligned) × 3 (social, environmental or economic SMOs) between-subject, scenario-based experiment with 313 participants to test the hypotheses. A moderated mediation analysis was also conducted. Findings The results show that SMO-aligned employee behavior has a positive impact on customers’ trust in contrast with SMO-nonaligned behavior independent of the SMO. The relationship between employee behavior and customer word-of-mouth is mediated by trust. Furthermore, the effect on trust is moderated by value-based brand choice. Originality/value This study contributes to employee behavior research by examining the impact of SMO-aligned employee behavior on customer outcomes in sustainable service organizations. Adding to previous research on employee behavior, it further considers the impact of value-based brand choice.