A Study Of Corporate Reputation Structure In China

Looking at the market-to-book ratio of stock quoted companies reveals that the major part of a firm's value is based on intangible assets.Fierce global competition,more critical consumers and the information overload make intangible assets more and more important.Against the backdrop of growing economic globalization,searching for key success factors and fostering core competency are high-priority tasks for companies.Corporate reputation has frequently been denoted as the most valuable intangible asset,not least because of its strong exclusiveness and irreplicability. Though there is a universal agreement on its importance,a consensus on its definition and measurement is far from being achieved.In the first chapter,we roughly grouped present available definitions of corporate reputation into four categories according to different points of academic view.After that,we critically reviewed well-known measurement methods such as:Fortune American Most Admired Companies(AMAC),Fortune Global Most Admired Companies(GMAC),Reputation Quotient(RQ) and Schwaiger's explanation and measurement model by presenting both their advantages and weakness.In the last part of this chapter,we mainly introduced the latest Schwaiger's model which is the basis of our empirical studies in the next chapters.After the introduction of def'mitions and measurement methods of corporate reputation,in the second chapter,statistical methods used in this paper were presented with details,including structural equation modeling and partial least squares. Both these two methods are quite popular within the field of social science due to their own advantages.In the first part of this chapter,an elaborate introduction of structural equation modeling would be present with the comparison with traditional statistical methods.In the second part,the method of partial least squares was given in details and was compared with LISREL method.In 2004,a comprehensive measurement and explanation model was suggested by Schwaiger(2004),based on prior research,qualitative studies and a large multinational data set,conceptualizing corporate reputation as an attitudinal construct and splitting it into an affective and a cognitive component.The model has shown a significant goodness-of-fit within Western cultures,which triggers us to extend the model to different countries with different cultures.Since China is becoming an indispensable part of the world market and because ever more foreign companies are entering this market,corporate reputation management in China seems promising.In chapter 3,our empirical study in the Chinese context shows the applicability of our model in China as well.Due to the culture-dependence and irreplicability of corporate reputation,effective and successful reputation management methods and experiences within one country or culture can hardly be directly replicated in another,thus reputation management within multi-national companies should be suited to local culture and environment. However,before implementing effective localized reputation management,the different mechanism of corporate reputation between cultures should be clearly investigated in the first place.The aim of chapter 4 is to make a contribution to this topic by making a comparative study of corporate reputation between China and three western countries.Multi-group comparative analysis was employed in this chapter and the comparison results across countries show that the mechanism of corporate reputation in China differs substantially from three developed countries,whereas the most important driver of corporate reputation in developed countries-quality is almost the least important one in China.Since the model's applicability in China has been proved and the difference of the structure of corporate reputation between China and other countries have been identified in previous chapters,using structural equation modeling and partial least squares statistical methods and taking advantage of first-hand data,the impact of corporate reputation on customer loyalty was empirically studied in chapter 5. Statistical results indicate that the affective component of corporate reputation exerts greater and more significant influence on the establishment of customer loyalty than the cognitive component does.Furthermore,performance and corporate social responsibility were identified to be the most two important drivers in influencing corporate reputation and also in driving customer loyalty.