【正文】 rthon. Michael Ewing and Li Lian Hah. Captivating pany: dimensions of attractiveness in employer branding． International Journal of Advertising， 2020（ 2） :151157． 15 internal marketing as ‘the task of successfully hiring, training and motivating able employees to serve the customer well’. The present study is concerned primarily with the successful ‘hiring of employees’ in Kotler’s (1994) definition. It examines how astute employers can embrace the principles and practices associated with external brand management and marketing munication, internally. In other words, it extends beyond the HRM notion of recruitment advertising (Gatewood et al. 1993) and considers how firms might assess the degree to which they are considered to be ‘employers of choice’ and in the process, attract the highestcalibre employees. It is generally recognized that intellectual and human capital is the foundation of petitive advantage in the modern economy. Accordingly, the contest among employers to attract and retain talented workers takes place in a world where technological advances and global petition are driving widespread change in employment patterns (OsbornJones 2020). This paper begins by considering the effect of an anization’s advertising on its own employees. Next, we broaden the focus to internal branding and employer branding. We then introduce and define the concept of employer attractiveness and develop a reliable and valid scale to assess the construct. Internal advertising Berry (1981) appears to have been the first to recognize the potential impact of advertising on (current) employees, yet, as Gilly and Wolfinbarger (1998) note, marketers today are still overlooking an important internal or ‘second audience’ for their advertisements: their own employees. They conclude that advertising decisionmakers may underestimate the importance of the employee audience for advertisements. Given that employees will be influenced by advertisements, it is important that panies make every effort to ensure that this influence is positive. Consequently advertising decisionmakers need to understand the effect that advertising has on current and potential employees – for example, the fact that current employees enjoy an ‘insider’ role and want information in advance of marketing munications (Gillyamp。de Chernatony 2020). Internal branding, according to Bergstrom et al. (2020), refers to three things: municating the brand effectively to the employees； convincing them of its relevance and worth； and successfully linking every job in the anization to delivery of the ‘brand essence’. CocaCola’s renowned former chief marketing officer, Sergio Zyman (2020, p. 204) concurs: ‘Before you can even think of selling your brand to consumers, you have to sell it to your employees.’ He goes on to argue that how a brand is positioned in the minds of consumers is heavily dependent on a pany’s employees. It is worth noting that the first conference on ‘internal branding’ was recently held in Employer branding Employer branding has been described as the ‘sum of a pany’s efforts to municate to existing and prospective staff that it is a desirable place to work’ (Lloyd 2020). Advertising may bee a critical tool in the efforts that firms make to identify, acquire and retain skilled employees. Increasingly, it is likely to also be used to create what has in the popular business press recently been referred to as ‘employment brands’ (Sherry 2020) – building and sustaining employment propositions that are pelling and different. The moniker ‘employer brand’ appears to have first been coined by Ambler and Barrow (1996), who defined it as ‘the package of functional, economic and psychological benefits provided by employment, and identified with the employing pany’ (p. 187). The authors go on to suggest that, just like a traditional brand, an employer brand has both personality and positioning. Employment branding is therefore concerned with building an image in the minds of the potential labor market that the pany, above all others, is a ‘great place to work’ (Ewing et al. 2020). According to human resources consultants Hewitt Associates,2 there are five steps to developing a strong employer brand: (i) understand your anization, (ii) create a ‘pelling brand promise’ for employees that mirrors the brand promise for customers, (iii) develop standards to measure the fulfillment of the brand promise, (iv) ‘ruthlessly align’ all people practices to support and reinforce the brand promise, and (v) execute and measure. Moreover, it is posited that panies with strong employer brands can potentially reduce the cost of employee acquisition, improve employee relations, increase employee retention and even offer lower salaries for parable staff to firms 17 with weaker employer brands (Ritson 2020). Collins and Stevens (2020), confirming prior research, suggest that early recruitment activities are indirectly related to intentions and decisions through two dimensions of employer brand image: general attitudes towards the pany and perceived job attributes. Examples of employer brands, and indeed employer advertising, are being increasingly mon. Ewing et al. (2020) classify existing approaches to employment branding by identifying three basic types of employment advertising strategy, and provide numerous examples of each. Lloyd (2020) cites the example of an Australian bank’s TV mercial, clearly aimed at existing and potential employees. While there are numerous examples of ‘employer advertising’, few are as explicit as a recent DaimlerChrysler ad, which appears to target potential employees as the primary audience. The doublepage spread advertisement Employer attractiveness A closely relat