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.