Signaling Family Firm Identity

Sandra Wolf develops a better understanding of the importance of clearly communicating family influence. She examines the efficacy of brand elements that signal family influence and that help external stakeholders to identify a family firm. An experiment with 543 students in Germany and Switzerland is carried out to empirically test the derived hypothesis. The results highlight two important findings. Firstly, the importance of a family firm tagline as well as the family name as brand elements are able to signal "family firm" and this helps potential employees to immediately categorize the potential employer. Secondly, a positive relationship between the identification of a family firm and applicant attraction was confirmed as to that the relationship is serially mediated by perceived brand authenticity and perceived benevolence.