Abstract
Consumer advertising is one of the most visible marketing tools of a retailer. This means that it will reach many different stakeholders. Academic marketing research, however, tends to focus only on one of them, namely the consumer. Given that consumers are, in fact, the main target audience for advertising, this focus is sound. Still, there is a growing literature documenting the effects of consumer advertising on other stakeholders, such as employees (e.g., Wolfinbarger-Celsi and Gilly 2010) and investors (e.g., Osinaga et al. 2011). This research clearly shows that consumer advertising influences perceptions above and beyond the consumer perceptions it is primarily intended to promote. In the current paper we investigate how consumer advertising influences retail employees. More specifically we explore if and how retail employee perceptions of consumer advertising might influence their organizational identification.