Drivers of Corporate Reputation and Its Differential Impact on Customer Loyalty

Abstract

Managing corporate reputation as a pivotal intangible asset has become a key objective for companies, since corporate reputation leads to a variety of favourable outcomes, amongst oth-ers customer loyalty. However, research on the corporate reputation-loyalty link has mainly treated corporate reputation as a unidimensional construct that reflects mostly cognitive as-pects. We address this shortcoming with two studies using a two-dimensional conceptualisa-tion of corporate reputation. The first study offers a nuanced perspective on the corporate rep-utation-loyalty link by taking into account a cognitive component as well as an affective com-ponent and assessing their impact on loyalty. The second study sheds light on aspects that drive the two reputation dimensions, i.e. organisational competence and likeability. In our panel regression approach, we use a data set consisting of surveys that were conducted in more than 20 countries to sample reputation and loyalty data for six B2B/B2C companies op-erating in the pharmaceutical industry.