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This paper aims to propose a typology of corporate communication strategy; to investigate whether the typology is present among Fortune 500 corporations; and to explore whether there is a dominant strategy and industrial differences among them.

A content analysis of all 2008 Fortune 500 corporate web sites was undertaken.

This paper finds that there are three corporate communication strategies used to affect publics' corporate associations: corporate ability (CAb) strategy; corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy; and a hybrid strategy. The results demonstrate that a majority of corporate public relations for Fortune 500 companies emphasize a CAb communication strategy over a CSR or hybrid strategy, whereas the top 100 Fortune 500 corporations focus on a CSR strategy over the other two strategies. Industrial differences are also found in adopting different corporate strategy among the companies.

The applied value of this research it is that provides convincing and realistic insights about contemporary corporate communication strategy and a valuable set of communicative directives to public relations practitioners managing corporate‐context communications with stakeholders since it explores dominant corporate strategy among Fortune 500 companies.

The purposes of this study are to identify the types of brand association and examine the relationship between association characteristics and brand equity. Based on a literature review, two types of brand association are identified. One is product association including functional attribute association and non‐functional attribute association. The other is organizational association including corporate ability association and corporate social responsibility association. An empirical study measures the numbers of association, deriving from free association, and examines its differences between three pairs of high and low equity brands. We found that the corporate social responsibility association is almost absent across four high equity brands from subject’s free associations. Based on the other three contents of brand association, we use its total number of association to identify the orientation of association for each brand. The results are the same as that of using the favorable association. In addition, we also found that the number of brand association and total association have a significant relationship with brand equity. But the core of the brand association, instead of total association, is the key factor of driving brand equity building. The greater the numbers of the core brand association, the higher the brand equity. However, there is no significant difference for the other brand associations between the high and low equity brands. Marketers should develop the core association to position its brand strategy to create competitive advantages.

Most research on branding highlights the role of associations for a single brand. Many firms, however, have multiple brands and/or different versions of one brand. The latter is largely the case for many corporate brands. This paper aims to broaden the understanding of corporate brand associations and their transfer within the firm’s brand and product portfolio. In particular, this paper also examines the concept of corporate brand innovativeness and the influence of brand architecture as supportive and restrictive boundary conditions for its transfer.

This conceptual paper explains the nature, benefits and challenges of corporate brand innovativeness within the context of a firm’s brand architecture. On the basis of a literature review, the authors provide an overview of the domain and derive avenues for future research.

Research and practice have not fully realised the importance of corporate brand images for supporting a firms’ product portfolio. In particular, (corporate) marketing managers need to consider the potential value of favourable perceptions of corporate brand innovativeness across products and the moderating role of brand architecture.

More empirical research is needed to understand the reciprocal relationship and transfer between corporate and product brand associations and equity.

A corporate marketing perspective allows firms to use corporate brand associations to support products and services for that brand. This paper discusses perceived corporate brand innovativeness as one particularly important corporate brand association.

The authors discuss the use of corporate brand associations under the consideration of brand architectures and boundaries and draw on several research streams in the brand management literature. Much of the branding and innovation literature centres on the product level; research on corporate brand innovativeness has been relatively neglected.

Consumers tend to form their perceptions about a company via two associations: corporate ability (CA) that centers on expertise in producing quality products and corporate social responsibility (CSR) that focuses on societal obligations. To date, investigations on the adoption of such association-based corporate communication strategies are yet to address the interactive and multi-source features of social media. Drawing theoretical insights from corporate associations and the warranting principle, the purpose of this paper is to fill the gap and examine the joint effect of association-based corporate posting strategy and corresponding electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) comment valence on social media.

A three (corporate posting strategy: CSR vs CA vs hybrid (CSR + CA)) by two (eWOM comment valence: positive vs negative) between-subjects experiment (n=193) was conducted.

The effect of corporate posting strategy on consumers’ CSR associations was found to be significant only when eWOM comment valence was positive. Significant main effects of both posting strategy and eWOM comment valence were found on CA associations, perceived corporate reputation, and purchase intention.

This study extends the theoretical framework of corporate associations to the interactive context on social media and provides empirical evidence for the effectiveness of association-based posting strategies when they are jointly presented with eWOM comments at different valence levels. Findings of this study also provide implications for business and communication professionals to communicate with consumers on social media more effectively.

The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of two types of corporate associations – corporate ability (CA) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) – on consumer brand loyalty in retail banks in India.

A survey on 489 banking consumers was carried out. To achieve research objectives, test hypotheses and analyze data, structural equation modeling was used.

The findings show that CA and CSR associations were found to have positive and indirect influences on consumer brand loyalty through brand identifications. This indicates that the process of corporate association transforming into loyalty is much more complicated, and there are other factors influencing this process, making brand identification necessary for achieving customer brand loyalty.

The results presented in this study have important managerial implications for banking companies in India. The findings demonstrate the importance of CA and CSR associations in the present business scenario and highlight the need to successfully implement them in management policies.

This study contributes to the existing body of literature by highlighting the influence of brand identification on brand loyalty through affective commitment and satisfaction.

This study aims to propose a model that delineated the diffusion process of product-harm misinformation on social media. Drawing on theoretical insights from cue diagnosticity and corporate associations, the proposed model mapped out how consumers' information skepticism and perceived content credibility influence their perceived diagnosticity of the product-harm misinformation and corporate ability (CA) associations with the company being impacted, which in turn influenced their trust toward the company and negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) intention.

A survey was conducted with 504 US consumers to empirically test the proposed model. Following the survey, in-depth interviews were conducted with 11 communication professionals regarding the applicability of the model.

When exposed to product-harm misinformation on social media, consumers' perceived diagnosticity of misinformation was negatively impacted by their information skepticism and positively impacted by perceived content credibility of misinformation. Perceived diagnosticity of product-harm misinformation negatively impacted consumers' CA associations, which then led to decreased trust and increased NWOM intention. Findings from the interviews further supported the diffusion process and provided insights on strategies to combat product-harm misinformation. Strategies shared by the interviewees included preparedness and social listening, proactive outreach and building strong CA associations as preventative measures.

This study incorporates the theoretical frameworks of cue diagnosticity and corporate associations into the scholarship of misinformation and specifically addresses the unique diffusion process of product-harm misinformation on social media. This study provides insights and tangible recommendations for communication professionals to combat product-harm misinformation.

This study examines the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) capabilities on corporate association and, consequently, customer orientation and price premium, which are key to competitive advantage.

This study adapts survey instrument targeting employees of a Korean firm. A total of 168 usable questionnaires were collected from seven Korean firms that were conducting CSR and public relations (PR) activities.

CSR and PR capability induce positive CSR and corporate ability (CA) associations, which improve customer orientation and increase price premium. The results of our empirical study indicate that a company should consider both CSR and PR capabilities to enhance its employees’ positive attitude to its CSR activities and CA association.

This study has undertaken a holistic examination of important role of CSR and PR capability and their outcomes, namely customer orientation and price premium.

Understanding of CSR capabilities in terms of competitive advantage is imperative to the establishment of strategic CSR initiatives. This study attempts to answer whether corporate capabilities for social responsiveness improve a company’s competitive advantage.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship among consumers’ corporate associations, consumer-corporate connection, and corporate brand loyalty, with a particular focus on the moderating role of national culture.

The conceptual framework is tested on American and South Korean subjects. Structural equation modeling is used to test the hypothesized framework.

The positive influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) associations on social self-concept connection is stronger in collectivist than individualist culture, whereas the positive influence of personal self-concept connection on his/her loyalty to the corporate brand is stronger in individualist than collectivist culture.

The study relied on participants’ memory about a product and a manufacturing company of a product. It is possible that their memories about the product and manufacturing company could be incomplete and be tainted by their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with a particular product they experienced rather than overall brand image of the company’s products.

Firms are advised to assess how customers of the target market across different national cultures perceive their CSR initiatives and corporate competences in deciding on the type of images and associations to invest and build, that is, either authentic CSR activities or product quality competence.

A substantiation of the moderating role of national culture on the impact of a consumer’s corporate associations on his/her self-concept connections as well as on the impact of self-concept connections on his/her corporate brand loyalty.

In the present paper, the authors aim to study the relationship between corporate associations and loyalty by analyzing the role of identification with the company and satisfaction in this connection.

The effects of corporate associations on consumers' loyalty were tested through a structural equation model for a sample of 781 financial services users.

The results confirm the value of commercial expertise (CE) as one of the most important determinants of both consumer satisfaction and identification with their financial services provider. Besides, corporate social responsibility (CSR) contributes to building consumer identification with the company, which is positively correlated to satisfaction too. Satisfaction is thus presented as both an affective and cognitive consumer response in the financial industry, which, along with identification, finally determines the attitudinal loyalty a consumer shows towards their provider.

With this study, the authors try to contribute to a better knowledge of the consumer loyalty formation process as it begins with the perception of corporate associations for its commercial expertise and its social commitment. The researchers take into account the role of two variables – i.e. identification and satisfaction with the company – that had not been studied in depth in research analyzing the role of corporate associations in consumer loyalty. Moreover, CSR associations are also studied from a multidimensional point of view, as suggested in recent studies and in comparison to the vast majority of previous research, which has concentrated on specific and narrow dimensions of the concept, especially the social dimension.

This paper aims to investigate consumers’ attitudinal and behavioral responses to brand crisis and examine an empirical model to explain consumer’s internal process in the context of negative information about a brand, analyzing the relationships between the brand association types, brand-customer relationship strength and consumers’ responses depending on the types of brand crises.

This study uses an integrative approach based on qualitative and quantitative methods: a focus-group interview and an experiment.

The results indicated that consumers’ responses were more favorable in the corporate ability (CA) crisis than in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) crisis. In addition, consumers with high brand-customer relationship strength and brand associations for CA (CSR) showed more favorable responses to a brand crisis related to CA (CSR) than to that related to CSR (CA).

Managerially, firms should improve their marketing activity to reinforce particular brand association type that strongly related customers mainly have. In addition, firms should carefully find the best timing and channel that strongly related customers usually access, to present corporate corresponding statements in brand crisis and information of their corporate crisis-coping process.

Theoretically, this study will contribute to the literature on brand crises by providing critical insights into the mechanism underlying consumers’ responses to brand crises.