Creating Corporate Reputations : Identity, Image and Performance

Book excerpt: Recent research in business strategy suggests that corporate reputations are a valuable strategic asset for every company. Good reputations have been shown to help firms attain and sustain superior financial performance in their industry. This book outlines how high-status companies become corporate super brands, and it present managers with a framework to proactively enhance their corporation's desired reputation. While many books concentrate on advertising or corporate identity as the primary tools for reputation enhancement, this book provides a more expansive and realistic picture of what it takes to build a corporate super brand. One of its key contributions is that it emphasizes the roles of customer value and organizational culture in the reputation-building process and exposes the limitations of corporate advertising, sponsorships, and minor corporate identity change. Drawing on more than fifteen years of academic research, executive seminars, and consulting experience, Grahame Dowling suggests ways to improve the corporate reputations that different groups of stakeholders hold of your company. He also describes how to avoid many of the traps that catch unwary managers who try to improve their company's desired reputation.