The purpose of this study is to summarize various issues and discussions on reputation, and to explore the opinion of professionals and general publics on the issues. Special focus was given on the conceptual difference between reputation and image, r...
The purpose of this study is to summarize various issues and discussions on reputation, and to explore the opinion of professionals and general publics on the issues. Special focus was given on the conceptual difference between reputation and image, reputation attributes, and measurement of reputation, For this, 23 in-depth interviews were conducted with reputation specialists (of academic and field), corporate executives, journalists, analysts, and general publcs.
First, professionals and publics considered corporate reputation and corporate image as different concepts. Interviews have revealed that reputation was recognized as a whole concept based on the corporate reality and performance, while image was recognized as a fragmented concept based on superficial elements.
On the reputation attributes, intrinsic attributes such as revenue, profit, performance or corporate philosophy were thought as most important factors, while they also indicated the importance of communication as the attribute influencing corporate reputation. This result shows that future study on corporate reputation needs to pay attention to the attribute of corporate communication, as well as to the intrinsic attributes of corporate.
Respondents presented elements of various dimension as the attributes influencing reputation, and this shows multi-level index structure is needed to measure corporate reputation. Common index to measure corporate reputation has hot been developed yet and to develop index reflecting the distinctiveness of Korea, further scientific studies on reputation measurement will have to be continued.
The limit of this study lies in the difficulty of generalization of the study result, since the study was conducted with the objective of initial exploration through in-depth interviews. Future study will have to verify the result by conducting quantitative survey.