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The commentary aims to consider the nexus between corporate marketing, ethical corporate marketing, ethical corporate identity and corporate social responsibility. It seeks to take an explicit internal organisational perspective. It also aims to identify future research avenues.

The commentary explains the relevance of the previous interlinking concepts with a discussion based on a review of past and current research.

While highlighting the need for a fundamental reappraisal of marketing at the organisational level, it outlines potential problems and pitfalls with internal organisational ethical alignment, between employees and their organisation's ethical corporate identity.

Enhanced appreciation for ethical corporate marketing and identity along with some of the challenges faced with internal ethical alignment, can help organisations and institutions to become more astute with the management of internal stakeholder relationships.

The employee perspective for ethical corporate marketing, ethical corporate identity and corporate social responsibility are all relatively under‐researched. This commentary attempts to address this by providing an overview of these intertwining concepts in relation to internal ethical concerns.

By drawing on theories of social identity, attraction, social comparison and consumer identification, this research seeks to examine how consumers' perceptions of other customers of an organisation (the other customer effect) may have an influence on corporate image and consumer‐company identification. This study aims to test a model integrating these constructs in two contexts, i.e. products and services. It also seeks to investigate the attitudinal and behavioural consequences of a favourable corporate image in order to provide more insights to the argument that a corporate marketing approach helps to enhance marketing performance.

A survey of a convenience sample of 383 adult consumers is conducted. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) is employed in order to test the proposed model. An alternative model is examined both in products and in services contexts.

The results indicate that perceptions about other customers influence customers' affective and behavioural reactions towards a company for both products and services. This finding suggests that corporate‐level marketing activities aiming to increase interaction among consumers lead to favourable corporate image and higher consumer‐company identification and hence desirable marketing outcomes. Furthermore, results show that for services the other customer effect is more prominent than for product offerings.

This study extends the concept of other customer effect to the context of corporate image and consumer‐company identification studies. It provides evidence that shifting towards corporate‐level marketing gives organisations another avenue for gaining a distinct position in the minds of consumers. Furthermore, by addressing both service and product contexts, it shows that other customer effect may exist beyond services studies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between corporate identity, corporate marketing and the pursuit of corporate objectives, particularly those objectives that require action at a societal level.

The research is based on a literature review and an holistic, multiple method case study, drawing on e‐mail newsletters, interviews, web sites, media articles and organizational documents.

Corporate identity may serve as a constraint on behaviour that limits strategic and tactical options. It may also constitute a strategic resource that enables action. The seven distinctive characteristics of front organizations identified in the paper enable them to overcome some of the constraints experienced by other organizational types in pursuing corporate objectives requiring action at a societal level.

Future research directions include: analysis and theory development in relation to the design and marketing of a “packaged present” CI; the expansion of this analysis to other types of temporary organizations; and further exploration of the implications of temporality for corporate marketing.

Deploying an “active” definition of corporate identity can take practitioners beyond the audit‐based approach, with its focus on understanding “what the organization is”, to a strategic approach to corporate marketing focused on the temporal question “what does the organization wish to become?”

This paper begins to address two significant gaps in the corporate marketing and corporate identity literatures: the first in relation to corporate identity and temporality; and the second in relation to temporary organizations, particularly front organizations. The paper identifies seven distinctive characteristics of front organizations, which provide the basis for future research.

The main goal of this paper is to provide an integrative understanding of corporate social responsibility (CSR) from a corporate marketing perspective, highlighting the critical role of CSR in effective corporate marketing strategies.

The paper is conceptual and draws on the social identification, organisational identity and corporate marketing literatures from the European and US schools of thought.

The paper integrates and builds on extant thinking in corporate marketing and CSR to provide an identity‐based conceptualization of CSR. Based on this, it positions CSR as an optimal managerial tool for promoting alignment between multiple corporate identities (e.g. internal, external), which ultimately leads to key benefits for the company.

The paper is the first to highlight the unique role of CSR in being able to align multiple corporate identities. Furthermore, the paper threads together diverse perspectives on corporate identity and marketing to highlight the potential role of CSR in effective corporate marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to advance understanding of an individual's identification with an organisation (“organisational identification”) and propose a scale for its measurement, by means of a study drawing on the literature of corporate marketing, and group and corporate identification.

Factor analysis was applied to data collected by questionnaire from two independent samples of 200 and 525 respondents, in Slovenia, to test the causal‐path relationship of group and corporate identification to “organisational identification”.

Contrary to the prevailing wisdom, “organisational identification” is not a unidimensional construct, but comprises identification with the organisation both as a collective of individuals, and as a social entity. Results confirm the proposed structure of organisational identification, and the sound quality of the scale for its measurement.

The findings suggest a means for marketing strategists and managers to predict the forms of organisational identification in their organisations, undertake appropriate initiatives for its general enhancement, and thereby strengthen corporate performance.

This study offers two statistically verified scales for measuring group and corporate identification, and thus has important implications for the existing literature of corporate marketing and organisational identification.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the corporate marketing literature by examining how an individual's identification with a company influences their willingness to invest in the company's shares.

A set of hypotheses was developed, based on theory, and survey data were obtained from 440 individuals in order to test the hypotheses. The data pertained to the individuals' recent decisions to invest in particular companies' shares, and to the degree of their identification with the companies' identities. The analysis method was PLS path modelling.

First, an individual's identification with a company was found to have a positive effect on their determination to invest in the company's shares rather than in other companies' shares that have approximately similar expected financial returns/risks. Second, company identification was found to elicit preparedness to invest in the company's shares with lower financial returns expected from the shares than from other shares. Both influences were partly mediated by the individual's willingness to give support to a company with which they identify.

The study pertains to company identification of individual investors; institutional (and professional) investors are beyond the scope of the paper. Also, the sample focuses on investors in a single country (Finland), and the data may involve some self‐reporting and retrospection biases.

Considering corporate marketing in the stock markets, individuals who identify with the company are identified as worthwhile targets when the company seeks to attract new investors.

The paper provides theoretical grounding for and empirical evidence of the positive influence of company identification on individuals' willingness to invest in companies' shares. It is a novel finding for corporate marketing literature that individuals express their identification with a corporate brand also through investing in its shares.

This study seeks to focus on front‐line service employees and their views of internal branding and the extent to which personal and job‐specific factors impact on the success of internal branding in the reinforcement of brand identification and brand loyalty among service employees.

The research, based on a multiple case study representing the hotel industry in Thailand, involved the completion of 30 in‐depth qualitative interviews with customer‐interface employees followed by a quantitative survey with 680 customer‐interface employees located in five major hotels.

Corporate service brands need to coordinate internal branding activity to enhance their employees' identification with, commitment to, and loyalty to, the brand. The relationships between the concepts of identification, commitment and loyalty of employees are determined. Personal variables such as age, education, and length of service as well as situational factors regarding their work environment are found to have moderating effects on the effectiveness of the internal branding process.

The paper highlights the importance of internal branding on employees' brand identification, commitment and loyalty. However, management should also be aware that the impact of internal branding would not be constant across all employees within an organisation. Personal variables such as age, educational background, and length of service with the brand should also be taken into account. The impact of internal branding on an employee's attitudes and behaviour are heightened when employees are satisfied with their workplace. As such, internal branding cannot be looked at in isolation and is unlikely to be successful if the work environment is not conducive to the employees and the brand values.

Much of the work on internal branding is conceptual and based on small‐scale studies undertaken with management or consultants. This paper provides empirical evidence from the front‐line service employees' perspective on the relationships between internal branding and brand identification, brand commitment, brand loyalty and brand performance. It also provides an empirical investigation of potential moderators for internal branding.

This article outlines the nature of corporate marketing myopia and details the salient characteristics of a corporate marketing logic. The notion of identity‐based views of the firm is held to be highly meaningful to the comprehension of corporate marketing. In addition, the paper aims to broaden the understanding of the antecedents of corporate marketing by making reference to earlier, integrative endeavours (sensory integration, design integration, communications integration, branding integration and identity integration).

The commentary explains the nature, antecedents, and benefits of an organisation‐wide corporate marketing logic.

A corporate marketing logic characterises those organisations which realise their institutions and corporate brands can be important sources of differentiation. Moreover, it is held that organisations need to be involved in multi‐lateral relationships vis‐à‐vis customers, other stakeholders and with society at large. It is also mindful that an organisational marketing orientation should accord sensitivity to CSR/ethical concerns. A key precept of the corporate marketing logic is that it is institution‐wide ethos which is enacted via an organisation's culture. A long and a short definition of corporate marketing are enumerated.

Perceiving organisational marketing via the prism of identity‐based views of the firm and utilising the new corporate marketing mix (the 8Cs of corporate marketing) affords a practical and pragmatic means by which senior managers can foster and maintain a corporate marketing ethos and culture.

A corporate marketing framework is introduced which is informed by: identity‐based views of the firm perspective and by key corporate‐level constructs.