Building Corporate Identity, Image and Reputation in the Digital Era

T C Melewar, Charles Dennis, Pantea Foroudi, T C Melewar, Charles Dennis, Pantea Foroudi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000382211
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

Brands – corporate, products, service – today are collectively defined by their customers, deriving from personal experiences and word of mouth. This book acts as a forum for examining current and future trends in corporate branding, identity, image and reputation.

Recognising the complexity and plurality at the heart of the corporate branding discipline, this book fills a gap in the literature by posing a number of original research questions on the intrinsic nature of corporate branding ideas from corporate (external) and organisation (internal) identity perspectives as they relate to brand management, corporate reputation, marketing communications, social media, smart technology, experiential and sensory marketing. It incorporates current thinking and developments by both multidisciplinary academics and practitioners, combining a comprehensive theoretical foundation with practical insights. The text will serve as an important resource for the marketing, identity and brand practitioners requiring more than anecdotal evidence on the structure and operation of stakeholders communication in different geographical areas. It determines current practices and researches in diverse areas, regions and commercial and non-commercial sectors across the world.

The book provides scholars, researchers and postgraduate students in business and marketing with a comprehensive treatment of the nature of relationships between companies, brands and stakeholders in different areas and regions of the world.

Part I

Introduction

1 Introduction

Building corporate identity, image and reputation in the digital era

T C Melewar, Charles Dennis and Pantea Foroudi

Introduction

Corporate branding, identity, image and reputation have become increasingly important in academic research and management practice. The growth has been driven in large part by the prodigious, prestigious research and publication output of researchers in a handful of business schools over a couple of decades. From early work on corporate visual identity published in world-leading journals such as Journal of International Business Studies, as far back as the previous millennium, these scholars’ works have led to the development of scales for corporate visual identity, progressing to a research agenda encompassing all aspects of corporate branding, identity, image and reputation across a wide spectrum of traditional and new channels.

Over the ensuing decades, this field has been defined and broadened. Previous research published demonstrated that there is a considerable divergence in opinions among practitioners concerning the fundamental components of corporate identity. Over the decades, research has made great strides in unifying the concepts. Further research has progressed beyond the role that visual identity plays in the corporate identity and corporate image literature to encompass non-visual cues. A holistic perspective incorporates all sensory stimuli based on the five human senses (i.e. seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching), proposing the construct of corporate sensory identity. Corporate sensory identity incorporates these five sensory dimensions in a consistent way that reflects all senses by which an organisation can convey its identity to all of its internal and external stakeholders. Other research links corporate logo, image and reputation. The main antecedents of the favourable corporate logo are a corporate name, design and typeface. Logo enhances the corporate image, attitude towards advertisements, recognisability, familiarity and corporate reputation. More recent studies extend understanding of corporate impression formation to online communities and corporate website favourability.

Notwithstanding extensive study to date, by its very nature, this body of work poses many future research questions. These include, for example, what are the effects of antecedents such as corporate communication, design, culture, behaviour, strategy, structure, organisation, leadership, financial and social performance on consequences including customer loyalty, trust and commitment across the whole range of possible contexts? This book thus aims to bring together researchers addressing research areas such as these in determining what and how customers seek to engage with an organisation and its offerings. Customers engage with brands through many channels including word of mouth, social networks and mobile apps. As the economic environment becomes more customer-driven, corporate and brand identity become essential aspects of organisation strategy driven by customer demands for value co-creation. Hence brands – corporate, products, service – today are collectively defined by their customers, based on personal or business requirements for economic, emotional or experiential value, deriving from personal experiences and word of mouth.

The book acts as a forum for examining current and future trends in corporate branding, identity, image and reputation. Submissions of chapters are sought to engage with literature and ideas from corporate (external) and organisation (internal) identity perspectives as they relate to brand management, corporate reputation, marketing communications, social media, smart technology, experiential and sensory marketing.

Recognising the complexity and plurality at the heart of the corporate branding discipline, this book will fill a gap in the market, by posing a number of original research questions on the intrinsic nature of corporate branding ideas from corporate (external) and organisation (internal) identity perspectives as they relate to brand management, corporate reputation, marketing communications, social media, smart technology, experiential and sensory marketing. This book incorporates current thinking and developments by both academics and practitioners, combines a comprehensive theoretical foundation with practical insights and provides insights to assist managers in their daily decision-making and long-term brand decisions.

Main focus of the chapter

Issues and perspectives

This book aims to address the following four objectives: (i) to explore the multiple stakeholder audiences that brands of all types must address. Corporate branding encompasses many facets, which are covered throughout the book. Such facets of branding include strategic planning and campaign management, research and measurement, media relations, employee communication, leadership and change communication and crisis branding; (ii) to provide examples from a wide range of industries and firms in order to illustrate the many dimensions of corporate branding and theories; and (iii) to enable readers to understand research studies from different branding points of view. In this sense, they will be able to compare, contrast and comprehend whether “corporate branding” from different lenses are delivered similarly or otherwise in different parts of the world. This enables readers to understand differences and subsequent application towards managing these corporate brands. Readers will be able to acquire knowledge and understanding of (i) the key issues in corporate branding theories; (ii) the need for a strategic approach to planning and campaign management; and (iii) new developments in corporate branding theories. In addition, they will be able to (i) analyse the complex web of stakeholder audiences that corporate brands must address; (ii) develop and manage stakeholder strategy and campaigns; and (iii) adapt to the differing demands of stakeholders such as employees, the media and other stakeholder audiences.

Our volume starts from the issues related to corporate branding, identity, internal and external stakeholders, and companies and expands them adding useful insights on legacy, identity and reputation; performance and profit; differentiation and protection; ethics, sustainability and inclusion; aesthetics; sensorium; virtual space; internal stakeholders; external stakeholders; customer experience, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and business performance. Moreover, our book, proposing a mixture of theory and practice with effective case studies, aims at reaching primarily doctoral, postgraduate, graduate and final year undergraduate students in business and marketing, but it will be suitable for both managers and decision-makers around the world too.

This edited book serves as a core or supplementary text for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates and a key resource for practitioners.

The organisation of the book

There are four main parts to the book – the introduction, which offers the coverage of practical implications for corporate identity, marketing and communication practitioners, and the following paragraphs outline the main parts of the book.

Part I: Introduction “Building corporate identity, image and reputation in the digital era” introduces the book, its goals and briefly summarises the main topics of each part.

Part II: “Building a corporate brand identity” considers interrelationships between corporate identity, marketing assets and capability, architecture, sensorium, virtual space and aesthetic heritage as to whether branding values are delivered similarly in different sectors

Chapter 2 “Corporate identity: definition and components” by Mohammad M. Foroudi, Pantea Foroudi, and John M.T. Balmer provides a systematic review of the identity literature and reviews a range of literature in order to establish the domain of corporate identity and the related concepts. Then, the intrinsic nature of identity and background is shown by examining the growing interest in the evolution of perspectives in the corporate identity field. Also, the chapter examines corporate identity in relation to a number of different strands of established studies and identifies the key concepts related to corporate identity management by drawing insights from the main theoretical paradigms.

Chapter 3 “Managing marketing competencies: a framework for understanding antecedents of marketing capability and its relation to the company’s core competencies” by Pantea Foroudi, Mohammad M. Foroudi, Khalid Hafeez and Javad Izadi identifies the key elements of marketing assets and capabilities. The authors state that core competencies are the crown jewels of a company and, therefore, should be carefully identified, nurtured and developed. Based on resource-based theory, this study explores how core competence can lead to firms’ competitive advantage, and how a marketing firm can identify its core competence in the sector to attain competitive advantage.

Chapter 4 “Reputation: configuring the symmetrical and asymmetrical paths to architecture in a retail setting” is written by Mohammad M. Foroudi, Pantea Foroudi and Zhongqi Jin. Grounded in social identity and attribution theories, this chapter focuses on the effect of architecture and its components on reputation. The relationships conceptualised were evaluated using data collected from a survey of 489 online and offline UK retail consumers and employees. To accommodate the equifinality and complexity of these relationships, this study employs fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, predictive validity and fit validity check.

Chapter 5 “Conceptualising sensory brand experience: using review of knowledge fields and bibliometric data to identify potential future research direction” by Dongmei Zha, T C Melewar, Pantea Foroudi and Zhongqi Jin proposes a conceptual framework for sensory brand experience. The chapter starts with a review of the seven knowledge fields deemed to have constitutive influences on the development of sensory brand experience literature, followed by two bibliometric methods which cover 151 sensory-related articles and 4,038 citations between 1994 and 2019.

Chapter 6 “Corporate brand identity: virtual space”, by Maria Teresa Cuomo, Cinzia Genovino, Debora Tortora and Alex Giordano aims to underline the importance of digital (smart) and social media in corporate branding, identity, image and reputation. Consumers live immersive experiences that enable brand associations, especially in virtual space. By branding the virtual world, businesses can use smart technologies and social media to engage and create relationships with customers, achieving competitive advantages.

Chapter 7 “Aesthetic heritage and corporate branding Luxury heritage brands between tradition and modernity” by Angela Bargenda shows that aesthetic heritage does not oppose digitalisation, but, on the contrary, delivers valuable resources for the construction of a meaningful and value-based corporate identity. Also, in view of the acceleration of digital channels in marketing communication and sales transactions, issues of aesthetics related to heritage brands are becoming ever more pertinent.

Part III: Building a corporate brand image considers interrelationships between branding, design, aesthetics, voice, sensorium and virtual spaces from a wide range of commercial and non-commercial sectors which include business-to-business and business-to-consumers sectors as to whether branding values are delivered similarly in different sectors.

Chapter 8 “Corporate multi-channel branding: platforms for #corporatebranding” by Awele Achi, Ogechi Adeola and Francis Chukwuedo Achi focuses on multi-communication channels for corporate branding. Specifically, this chapter seeks to explicate the various appropriate communication channels open to organisations as they seek to align their overall corporate branding with their internal and external stakeholders, especially, in this digital era of sustainable branding.

Chapter 9 “Value co-creation behaviour: antecedents and consequences” by Yousef Alqayed, Pantea Foroudi, Charles Dennis, Mohammad M. Foroudi, and Kaouther Kooli emphasises the concept of value co-creation behaviour. The chapter identifies the key factors influencing the favourability of value co-creation behaviour (perceived quality, identification and experience) and the outcomes (satisfaction, passion, corporate brand commitment, brand loyalty and active participation).

Chapter 10 “An assessment of customer experience concept: looking back to move forward” by Dongmei Zha, Reza Marvi, Pantea Foroudi, Charles Dennis, Akiko Ueno, Zhongqi Jin and T C Melewar aims to identify the main knowledge structure of customer experience, to understand how the knowledge structure of customer experience has changed over time, and to build a new customer experience conceptual framework.

Chapter 11 “Employee occupational identity” by Maria J Jerez-Jerez, T C Melewar and Pantea Foroudi aims to develop a better comprehension of employee’s occupational identity concept, its antecedents and consequences (employee turnover and work engagement); the importance of the stimuli and its influence on building corporate identity, image and reputation in the digital era is explained by using salience as a moderator of this relationship.

Chapter 12 “Behavioural intentions in the UK fashion industry: the impact of perceived fashion innovativeness on fashion brand image with the moderating role of social media marketing and lovemark” by Helnaz Ahmadi Lari, Pantea Foroudi and Saheb Imani explores previous literature to (i) evaluate the concept of fashion innovativeness, (ii) identify the aspects that have a significant influence on fashion innovativeness, (iii) develop and assess a conceptual framework concerning the ...