Corporate reputation: seeking a definition

TLDR

Corporate reputation is debated as either synonymous with corporate image or distinct yet interrelated, according to most scholars. The article reviews marketing literature to define corporate reputation and examine its link to corporate image, and calls for future research on how reputation and image mutually influence each other through behavior, communication, and symbolism. The authors synthesize definitions from marketing academics and practitioners, merging them into two dominant schools of thought. The literature indicates a dynamic, bilateral relationship between a firm’s corporate reputation and its projected corporate image.

Abstract

This article reviews different viewpoints in the marketing literature in an attempt to clearly define the concept of corporate reputation and identify its relationship with corporate image. Definitions offered for the term corporate reputation by marketing academics and practitioners are therefore merged into two dominant schools of thought. These include the analogous school of thought, which views corporate reputation as synonymous with corporate image, and the differentiated school of thought, which considers the terms to be different and, according to the majority of the authors, interrelated. This article argues that on balance, the weight of literature suggests that there is a dynamic, bilateral relationship between a firm’s corporate reputations and its projected corporate images. Future research is therefore encouraged to explore how corporate reputations influence and are influenced by all the ways in which the company projects its images: its behaviour, communication and symbolism.