Employer Branding Dr Evariste Habiyakare Senior Lecturer in International Business HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences Finland evariste.habiyakare@haaga-helia.fi Ms. Johanna Heinonen-Salakka Senior Lecturer in Marketing HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Science Finland johanna.heinonen-salakka@haaga-helia.fi Introduction Employee and employer branding are gaining a high level of importance in today´s business world. In the near future, companies will be fighting a fierce competitive battle to attract and to maintain good and highly skilled employees. So far, many companies have not yet realised the importance of implementing a good employer branding strategy in order to increase their own competitive advantages. A quick look at the branding literature reveals an emphasis on product and service-based branding. So far, employer branding as a research field has been neglected. This paper intends at contributing in filling the gaps by comparing the expectations of Eastern and Western future employees in terms of employer branding. We compare views from two Asian countries: India and Vietnam and views from two Western countries: France and USA. By doing so, we hope to foster debates and call for more empirical researches to help companies to put emphasis on branding themselves to attract competitive employees. With this research, we are interested in finding answers to the following research questions: 1. What are the expectations of future employees in terms of employer branding? 2. What may be the differences and similarities in employer branding between East and West? 3. In which way can the employer brand/image help to make a company more attractive as an employer? 4. Which strategies may be put in place to attract and maintain high-skilled employees by improving employer branding In the following sections, a short literature overview is presented Literature review The concepts of brand and branding By looking at the literature about brand and branding, they steam from two perspectives: product and services branding and Employer branding. In the following, we briefly introduce these central concepts.