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Abstract: Brand transgressions might put at risk some of companies’ most important achievements: a high awareness brand and loyal customers’ trust. High awareness brands may suffer from the effects of a functional transgression on customers’ trust and perception regarding an organization’s capacity to keep its promises, as well as the relationship developed with loyal customers. A common outcome of a product functional transgression is government intervention asking for a product recall. The voluntary recall is an alternative to handle brand transgressions, but less common than mandatory product recalls. This paper adds to the literature by theoretically discussing and empirically analyzing how the relationship status of a first-time or loyal customer with a high awareness brand affects consumers’ trust after a functional transgression. Additionally, it examines the moderation effect of response to a functional transgression on the relation between trust’s components—competence, integrity, and benevolence. Through an experimental study 2 (company’s response: passive strategy; voluntary product recall) × 2 (relationship: loyal; first-time) × between-subjects design, the findings indicate that after a high awareness brand transgression, loyal consumers perceive greater competence, integrity, and benevolence in the brand than first-time consumers. When a transgression is followed by a passive strategy in which the transgressor company is aware of a malfunction and decides not to take any action to remediate the situation, loyal consumers have higher integrity and benevolence-based trust perception than first-time consumers. As voluntary recall takes place, loyal and first-time consumers’ perceptions of integrity and benevolence increase, and first-time consumers reach the same levels as loyal consumers, which suggests voluntary product recall is an effective trust recovery strategy for a high awareness brand. PubDate: 2023-05-24
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Abstract: Social media has brought complexity and unpredictability to scandal situations, making it complex for brands to protect their reputations. In a scandal, the involvement of influential social media users in information dissemination often amplifies the attack on an organisation. This research sheds light on the role of influential users in the spread of scandals via social media. This study analyses multiple cases of for-profit and not-for-profit organisations impacted by value-based vs. performance-based scandals. We collected data from the discussions on Twitter to analyse fourteen scandals. Across all cases, 455 influential users’ tweets were analysed. The findings suggest that while in a performance-based scandal, the role of news outlets in the spread of information is significant, in a value-based scandal, individual influential users have more influence. The research introduces three main categories for influential users’ engagement approach; attacking, defending, and neutral, arguing that influential users’ engagement approaches towards a scandal, represented in the valence of their tweets, influence online users’ participation in online scandal discussion. The research finds that influential users are more likely to tweet about a value-based scandal and these tweets subsequently often receive more retweets compared to tweets on performance-based scandals. In addition, for-profit (vs not-for-profit) organisations typically do not have influential users' advocacy in the time of scandals. PubDate: 2023-05-24
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Abstract: The failure of banks to safeguard customers’ funds has become a substantial issue that has affected public impressions on social media. One of the strategies to ensure the company's reputation is performing impression management. This study aims to assess the financial performance impact of using impression management on banking's Twitter. This study collected 6712 tweets from banks listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in 2019. The regression shows no influence on financial performance when banks post a lot of their achievements and accomplishments. However, being a friendly bank can have a favourable impact on financial performance. Empirically, this study contributes to explaining the influence of impression management categories on social media on financial performance, implying that firms should make the most of their social media communications to manage public impressions. PubDate: 2023-05-16
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Abstract: We investigated the relationship between sports team reputation and team identification (ID) when team reputation was operationalized at the dimension level and measured using reflective indicators. The Spectator-based Sports Team Reputation (Jang et al., Int J Sports Market Sponsorship 16(3):52–72, 2015) was modified and used to collect data from 520 fans of five European football league champions (i.e., Barcelona, Manchester City, Juventus, Bayern Munich, and Paris Saint-Germain) during the 2018–2019 season. Results of the structural equation modeling (SEM) showed five dimensions of SSTR (i.e., performance, spectator-orientation, social responsibility, tradition, and management quality) were significantly and positively related to ID. In addition, the results of the Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) method showed that high ID exists under two SSTR dimensions complex configuration, while absent under three complex configurations. Theoretically, the results provide a deeper understanding of the differential impact of spectator-based team reputation dimensions on fans’ team identification. Managerially, sports teams can use the scale as a diagnostic tool to measure their reputation from their fans’ perspective and strategically allocate their resources on the important dimensions and configurations of SSTR to improve fans’ ID. This research applied an innovative analysis approach to reveal necessary and sufficient conditions when conventional methods such as SEM have limited power. This paper highlights a valuable insight on how ID is formed through the SSTR. PubDate: 2023-05-06
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Abstract: This study uses the Signaling Theory to discuss the impact of signaling offenders’ hiring on corporate reputation through a parsimonious conceptual model. It is a survey of 482 respondents from a Brazilian state that, since 2010, has implemented a program to re-socialize criminals. The findings show that corporate social responsibility related to hiring vulnerable and stigmatized groups with bad reputations, such as prisoners, can foster organizations’ reputations. Furthermore, the results indicate that more than signaling offenders’ hiring using a social seal and the informational ambiguity about this corporate social responsibility activities, it is the signal credibility that most affects corporate reputation. Furthermore, it is about the efforts, investments, and resources employed to keep this organizational action and avoid employees’ adverse reactions, impacting stakeholders’ perception. PubDate: 2023-05-01
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Abstract: Prior work suggests that employee views of corporate reputation can influence a firm’s future financial performance and that previous financial performance can also influence employee views of reputation. What is not known is which is the greater effect, or whether the virtuous circle this implies might exist, particularly in smaller firms. The aim of this paper is to test the idea of a virtuous circle linking employee views of reputation (at two levels in the organization, senior managers and front-line employees) to firm performance. Data from a survey of employees in SME Spanish accounting audit firms were used to test a model derived from theory and prior work. We find that managers’ and employees’ views of reputation are each influenced by prior financial performance, employees more indirectly via the views of their managers. The influence of managers’ views on those of employees was in turn significant. However, the influence of both on future performance was less significant, with the views of managers having the greater effect. PubDate: 2023-05-01
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Abstract: While organizational values’ implications for firm effectiveness and employee outcomes have been studied extensively in management literature, the question of how organizational values influence marketing outcomes remains under-researched. Our research applies stakeholder theory to propose that an expanded organizational values framework is needed to account for marketing-relevant stakeholders (e.g., customers and the general public) and not solely those “inside” the firm (e.g., employees and shareholders). Using Schwartz’s human values model, the Stakeholder-organizational values framework is conceptualized and empirically explored. We use a corpus of CEO letters to examine the differential effects of firms’ emphases on Self-enhancement (e.g., corporate profitability) values versus Self-transcendence (e.g., societal benefits) values on customer satisfaction and corporate reputation. The study finds a significant relationship between firm Self-transcendence values orientation and corporate character reputation. Ultimately, the framework and original dictionary of terms provide an innovative method for assessing firms’ organizational values from a multi-stakeholder perspective. PubDate: 2023-05-01
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Abstract: This paper aims to assess the antecedents of brand forgiveness in smartphones and mobile communications sectors. A new conceptual model postulates that past negative experiences (PNE), symbolic incongruence and ideological incompatibility positively predict brand hate, which in turn determines brand avoidance (BA), negative word of mouth (NWOM) and brand retaliation (BR). Beyond that, the model also claims that those three types of behaviours are negatively correlated with consumers’ willingness to forgive the brands with a bad reputation. An online questionnaire was answered by 208 consumers, who mentioned several mobile communications brands for which they had negative feelings, the causes for those feelings and their consequences. Brand forgiveness was higher only when consumers revealed a low BA or low NWOM. Moreover, a cluster analysis identified three clusters/segments: Cluster 1—Male Heavy Brand Haters/No Forgivers (N = 79); Cluster 2—Female Forgivers (N = 55); Cluster 3—Mainstream Haters/No Forgivers (N = 74). Brand managers must implement claims monitoring and management policies in order to mitigate the negative experiences resulting from product and services nonconformities. Moreover, brands must have crisis communication plans in order to prevent and control all kinds of mediatic ideological incompatibilities with the major target segments. PubDate: 2023-05-01
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Abstract: By applying the equity theory, organizational support theory, signaling theory, and the social exchange theory to the customer context, this study intends to investigate the antecedents and consequences of service customers’ corporate reputation evaluation by examining the direct and indirect relationships between customers’ corporate reputation evaluation, customer justice perception, customer support perception, and customer citizenship behavior. Self-administered online surveys were conducted by implementing snowball sampling among real airline customers in Turkey, and 741 valid surveys were collected. Direct and indirect relationships between the research variables were tested via structural equation modeling and bootstrapping methods. Results showed that distributive justice perception, interactional justice perception, and customer support perception positively affect customers’ corporate reputation evaluation, whereas customers’ corporate reputation evaluation positively affects customer citizenship behavior as well. Furthermore, it was found that customers’ corporate reputation evaluation has a mediation role in the relationships between distributive justice perception, interactional justice perception, customer support perception, and customer citizenship behavior. PubDate: 2023-05-01
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Abstract: Employee voice may represent a risk for reputation-sensitive organizations, as use of voice may harm organizations’ desired reputation at the same time as it offers an opportunity to boost reputation. As such, voice should not be treated as a one-dimensional construct. Using a more nuanced approach, reputation concern, control-oriented HRM, and heteronomy are tested as possible antecedents to two forms of voice, namely promotive and prohibitive voice, in public sector schools and hospitals, respectively. The study is based on quantitative data from a survey of Norwegian high school teachers (n = 1055) and hospital employees (n = 453), covering the two main sectors in the Norwegian welfare state. Main methods of analysis include path analysis and bootstrapping. Reputation concern is found to directly stimulate promotive, but not prohibitive, voice, in hospitals. In schools, reputation concern does not stimulate voice at all, but inhibits prohibitive voice both directly and indirectly through leader–member exchange (LMX). Control-oriented HRM inhibits both forms of voice in schools, but not in hospitals. Heteronomy inhibits both prohibitive and promotive voice directly and indirectly in both schools and hospitals. In sum, schools are more voice restrictive than hospitals. The present study is among the first to examine the two-dimensional construct of voice in relation to reputation concern, control-oriented HRM, and heteronomy, and to comparatively examine these relationships in schools and hospitals, which differ in their degree of marketization. PubDate: 2023-04-26
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Abstract: The research aims to determine the importance of absorbing knowledge as a dynamic ability and creative strategic directions with far-reaching ideas, deep perspective, rational analysis, and comprehensiveness in the perception of seeking to achieve excellence by providing everything that is new and innovative to build strategic reliability that reflects an identity and an organizational image with visions The future of small “squishy” organizations under highly changing conditions. According to research implications, the most significant of which are (Do organizations realize the importance of “Absorptive Capacity of Knowledge” and “Strategic Reliability”'), the issue arises from the work of “small organizations” in a dynamic environment with weak control indicators. Some “small organizations” were chosen in Kirkuk Governorate and a sample was determined using the equation (Krejcie and Morgan in Educ Psychol Meas 30:607–610, 1970) data were gathered from a community of (750) employees using a questionnaire as the primary data collection technique, with analysis using “SPSS” and “GWO” to find the path that would need the least amount of time, money, and effort. Following a discussion of the findings, the most significant conclusions were drawn (it was discovered that “absorptive capacity of knowledge” has an effect that reflects the organizational identity of organizations as a dynamic force that distinguishes them in a highly competitive environment), and proposals were made, the most important of which was (the need to work on determining the value of the required knowledge, assimilation, and application, which makes it more capable of achieving its goals to build high strategic reliability). The empirical evaluation view of research is significant and priceless for all organizations because it enables them to determine future strategic directions based on knowledge of “the hidden advantage” which is particularly important for developing nations, this knowledge allows the organizations to strengthen their capabilities and create a unique organizational identity. It stems from an important and vital topic related to strategic-knowledge dimensions aimed at a better future for business organizations, especially after crises and external variables that weakened their position on the one hand and working to motivate the researched organizations to reconsider the process of polarization of human resources as the basis for obtaining the most important resource “knowledge” and ways to apply it to achieve superiority and precedence and build high reliability among the beneficiaries and the markets in which the researched organizations operate on the other hand. PubDate: 2023-04-18
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Abstract: The purpose of this study is to understand how students perceive social responsibility in HEIs, based on scepticism and congruence, and how it impacts HEIs´ desired outcomes like credibility, reputation, and the employability of their students. Moreover, the importance of the impact on credibility is highlighted, investigating its influence on reputation and employability. The study is based on cross-sectional data collected through a structured questionnaire using two samples of HEIs students: one had 430 Brazilian students, and the other 321 Portuguese students enrolled in different public and private HEIs. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) is used to test the proposed hypotheses. Results show that scepticism and congruence significantly influence the social responsibility perceptions of students. CSR perceptions significantly influence student employability, reinforced by their impact on reputation and credibility. The findings help to guide the marketing management actions of HEIs regarding building student preference, loyalty, and retention. The findings help to guide the marketing management actions of HEIs, especially regarding building student preference, loyalty, and retention. PubDate: 2023-03-29
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Abstract: The primary aim of this study is to analyse the impact of the dimensions of the Employer Brand on a candidate’s intention to pursue an employer. Secondly, the focus is on analysing the mediation effect of Perceived Organisation Prestige (POP) between the independent variable (Employer Brand) and the dependent variable (organisation pursuit intention), followed by an evaluation of the moderating effect of Person–Organisation Fit (POF) between POP and Organisation Pursuit Intention (OPI). Data for this study was collected from 419 final year students of engineering at various Central and State universities of Delhi, India, as per the approved list of Institutions by the University Grant Commission (UGC). Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), followed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), has been applied to validate the adopted scales in the current context. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) has been used to analyse the underlying relationship between the dimensions of Employer Brand and OPI, along with the mediating effect of POP and the moderating effect of POF in this context. This study finds a significant relationship between independent variables (career enhancement opportunity, work culture, company reputation, salary and other incentives and CSR and ethics) and organisation pursuit intention (independent variable). Furthermore, perceived organisation prestige was found to mediate the respective relationship of career enhancement opportunity (complete mediation), corporate reputation (partial mediation) and Salary and other incentives (partial mediation) with the candidate’s pursuit intention. Also, the POF (moderator) was found to have a significant impact on the relationship between the POP and the organisation pursuit intention. This is the first study of its kind to investigate the dimensions of Employer Brand that determine the intentions of a candidate to pursue an organisation for employment. Also, past research studies have highlighted the concept and importance of employer attractiveness in the international context with a focus on management graduates and working executives. However, the current study elaborates the analysis of the pursuit intentions of final year students of engineering in India, who aspire to secure a job in the near future. In addition, previous studies have not focused much on the mediating effect of an organisation’s prestige between the Employer Brand and OPI. Lastly, some studies have investigated POF as a mediator but this study explains its effect as a moderator between the POP (mediator) and the candidate’s pursuit intentions (dependent variable). PubDate: 2023-02-01 DOI: 10.1057/s41299-021-00132-6
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Abstract: The purpose of this research is to investigate the consumers’ negative attitudes towards Lebanese banks. We conducted two different studies. The first one sought to explain the consequences of negative attitudes towards banks by interviewing 22 individuals. The second study examined practitioners’ perceptions of consumers’ negative attitudes towards banks through 16 in-depth interviews with marketing executives, employees, and managers from different hierarchy levels. Our findings identify the negative consequences of consumer attitudes to the banks and present a list of suggestions for banks to build their reputation, drive customer engagement, and improve their image. PubDate: 2023-02-01 DOI: 10.1057/s41299-021-00135-3
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Abstract: This research examines the cover images of two inflight magazines—Ulisse (Alitalia) and Blue Wings (Finnair)—as a method for airlines to manage their impression. Drawing on concept of impression management, the study focuses on the visual strategies the cover images employ in order to shape the audience’s perception of the airlines. The data consists of 90 cover images published between January 2016 and February 2020. A visual rhetorical analysis was applied to examine the visual construction of the cover images and their functions. The findings show that the cover images of Ulisse and Blue Wings employed different strategies of visual rhetoric as part of their impression management. Whereas Alitalia seemed to strive for the image of a luxury airline, Finnair endeavored to create an image of an airline for ordinary people. Theoretically, this study contributes to the current knowledge of rhetorical approach to visual impression management in corporate communications. Methodologically, the study advances the research on corporate impression management by applying an analysis of visual rhetoric. PubDate: 2023-02-01 DOI: 10.1057/s41299-022-00138-8
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Abstract: Prior studies on the relationship between ESG information and cost of debt have found mixed results. They conclude that this relationship may be affected by some characteristics or attributes of the company. In this study, we examine whether corporate reputation mediates the relationship between ESG information and cost of debt. In other words, this study explores how ESG information influences corporate reputation, and how, in turn, corporate reputation affects the cost of debt financing. Data for corporate reputation were obtained from the Fortune “World’s Most Admired Companies” List, whereas data on ESG information were extracted from two sources: ESG performance were obtained from Sustainalytics database and ESG disclosure were obtained from Bloomberg database. Data on cost of debt and other control variables were also collected from Bloomberg database. Using structural equation models, we report a positive effect of both ESG performance and disclosure on corporate reputation. We also find that a good corporate reputation reduces the cost of debt financing and mediates the relationship between ESG performance/disclosure and cost of debt. We therefore conclude that firms that manage and disclose information on ESG issues have a better reputation, which in turn reduces their debt financing costs. PubDate: 2023-02-01 DOI: 10.1057/s41299-021-00130-8
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Abstract: Although prior studies have shown the moderating effects of relationship age among constructs, e.g., commitment, satisfaction, and overlook the relationships among constructs, e.g., brand relationship quality (BRQ), this study examines the relationship among relational bonds, BRQ, and brand loyalty. A total of 524 questionnaires from respondents aged between 15 and 24 are analyzed, using partial least squares. This study finds the following: (1) Relationship age significantly moderates the relationships among relational bonds, sense of community, attitudinal attachment, and brand loyalty, thus demonstrating either reinforcing or attenuating effects. (2) Financial bonds have non-significant effects in establishing behavioral and attitudinal loyalty over time. (3) Social bonds and attitudinal attachment are important drivers of an attenuating effect in establishing brand loyalty over time. (4) Structural bonds and sense of community are two reinforcing mechanisms driving both behavioral and attitudinal loyalty. This study makes the following contributions: (1) Echoes the bright and dark sides of relationship marketing theories. (2) Proposes managerial solutions of both shorter- and longer-term customer retention strategies. PubDate: 2023-02-01 DOI: 10.1057/s41299-021-00131-7
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Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to experimentally examine stakeholder punishments in response to poor CSR performance communicated through either internal or external channels. Across two experiments, we find that receiving negative CSR information communicated through internal channels (CSR reports) or external channels (news articles) causes individuals to punish a firm (less investment, lower employment interest, buy less, post negative comments on social media). Furthermore, we find sensitivity to a conflict of information from internal and external channels, which increased Calls to Action on social media. This is a concern for firms because such social media posts can elicit further punishments from stakeholders and inflict reputational costs on the firm. The findings of our studies suggest that firms should accurately report CSR performance, especially if external channels are likely to communicate negative CSR information regarding the firm because such conflicting information can elicit a strong online backlash. PubDate: 2023-02-01 DOI: 10.1057/s41299-023-00158-y
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