Search results

Despite a well‐established corporate identity construct there is still ambiguity and disorientation regarding the corporate visual identity construct. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the inconsistent use of terminologies such as “symbolism” and “corporate design” as well as pointing towards an insufficient conceptualisation of the corporate identity and visual identity construct vis‐à‐vis other sensory dimensions.

A review of existing categorisations and conceptualisations of the corporate identity and visual identity construct is provided.

The paper presents a remodelled corporate visual identity construct that takes a holistic sensory perspective and proposes the corporate sensory identity construct as a more adequate and flexible reflection of current business reality.

The paper offers fundamental guidance for managers regarding the integrated and holistic utilisation of a set of sensory communication activities as part of their corporate identity management.

This paper contributes to the further understanding of the complexity of corporate identity management by addressing additional sensory dimensions apart from visual identity management. Moreover, by stressing the particular relevance of music and sound, this paper stimulates the integration of the auditory dimension as additional facet of a communication tool kit.

Describes the initiation and development of a corporate identity/visual identity programme, using a major UK university as a case study. Concludes that assessing a visual identity can be useful in identifying organizational weaknesses. However, whereas a weak visual identity may be a symptom of corporate malaise, a new visual identity, although powerful, should be used as part of an integrated approach when repositioning an organization.

Despite the significance of sound, hitherto the auditory dimension has been widely ignored with regard to corporate identity management and corporate communication. This paper aims to expand the domains of corporate identity and corporate communication by focusing on the auditory dimension as a component of company‐controlled communication.

Based on an extensive review of corporate identity and corporate communication literature, a set of hypotheses is proposed that reflect antecedents of corporate auditory identity management.

The paper not only illustrates the importance of the auditory dimension as part of corporate identity management, it also provides initial suggestions of antecedent factors that are expected to determine the utilisation of sound on a corporate level.

The presented discussion about the role of auditory identity vis‐à‐vis corporate identity management provides initial guidance for managers when considering the auditory dimension as a potential ingredient of their communication tool kit. Moreover, this paper advances existing knowledge by providing initial insight into the relationship between domains such as auditory identity and corporate identity, visual identity and corporate communication.

Designers have used Corporate Visual Identity Systems (CVIS) to widen the communications mix. Using name, symbol and/or logo, typography, colour and slogan, a CVIS helps transmit a company’s visual identity through fixed assets, such as buildings, vehicles and other business collateral. This wider view of business communications adds an eighth P, publications, to the seven Ps of service marketing: product, price, place, promotion, participants, physical evidence and process. Managerial literature suggests that firms who standardise their CVIS anticipate communications benefits beyond the usual marketing mix. A comparison of multinational companies with and without standardised CVIS supports this view.

The aim of the paper is to discuss corporate identities as they are expressed visually in annual reports in order to demonstrate how (and how much) the annual report as a statutory document is used strategically by companies as a means of investor relations in order to position the company as attractive to investors and other stakeholders.

An explorative visual analysis is employed on a corpus of six Danish companies from different branches of business and industry. The study is based strictly on a communication perspective and pays equal attention to the annual report's communicative purposes. In order to be able to draw conclusions on the strategic use of visual elements in annual reports, the findings from the visual analysis are further related to the corporate strategies of the companies as they are expressed through the companies' missions, visions, and values.

The study provides an empirical basis for concluding that visual elements are used strategically in annual reports to construct corporate identity aligned with company strategy in order to position companies as attractive to investors and other stakeholders.

This paper's contribution is to provide an empirical basis for a discussion of the potential of the annual report as a vehicle for constructing corporate identity.

This chapter aims to redefine corporate identity as a public relations (PR) tool, part of a new communication syntax of hypermodernity. In line with relevant theories of narrative engagement coming from the post-structuralist semiotics and the ‘aesthetics of interaction’, corporate identity is discussed as a conversational instrument, retrieved and reconstructed by ‘echo chambers’ and ‘curiosity gaps’. The territory of visual identity becomes part of a collective transaction, a sort of ‘open work’/‘opera aperta’, where consumers are asked to build their own ‘intentio lectoris’. In McLuhan’s terms, this can be translated as a ‘cooling down’ of the system of corporate identity. ‘Conversational branding’, rooted in the dialogic model of PR, provides an interactive usage of visual identity, and a new consumer-centric perspective in strategic communication.

This study aims to revisits the meaning of corporate identity (CI) in practice to identify its key dimensions and the interrelationships between them and to provide insights on how to operationalize the construct.

This study is based on a comprehensive literature review and qualitative research consisting of 22 semi-structured interviews with senior managers from 11 UK-leading companies, and three in-depth interviews with corporate brand consultants who worked closely with these firms in cognate areas.

The study identifies the following six key dimensions of CI in the UK industry: communication, visual identity, behavior, organizational culture, stakeholder management and founder value-based leadership.

The focus on UK leading companies limits the generalizability of the results. Further studies should be conducted in other sectors and country settings to examine the relationships identified in the current study.

This study identifies the salient dimensions of CI and, for the first time, the role of founder transformational leadership, employee identification and top management behavioral leadership as key dimensions and sub-dimensions of CI. The study also provides novel insights about the measurements for these dimensions. Additionally, this study introduces a model for the interrelationships between CI dimensions and their influence on corporate image, based on rigorous theoretical underpinnings, which lays the foundation for future empirical testing.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to examine how corporate identity (one of the elements of Balmer's 6Cs of corporate marketing) could be better understood, whilst also addressing how the deconstruction of one of the other elements (i.e. communications: corporate advertising) could provide deeper insight into what corporate identity truly means.

This paper examines various theoretical approaches which have compartmentalised the meaning of corporate identity. It also highlights how these compartments interrelate. The paper introduces the semiotic method and illustrates how this method could deconstruct firms' perception of corporate identity.

Two conceptual models and a semiotic method process were contributed. The first model reveals three main constructs of corporate identity, namely symbolism, behaviour, and corporate communications, and the second model reveals the corporate personality construct. The semiotic method reveals the positioning of corporate identity as a corporate personality construct.

This paper provides a better understanding of the meaning of corporate identity by developing two conceptual models and a semiotic method. The conceptual models provide an analysis of how various theoretical approaches which have compartmentalised the meaning of corporate identity interrelate. The semiotic method provides a stage‐by‐stage process of how a firm's perception of corporate identity is deconstructed. The conceptual models and the semiotic method give a better understanding of the meaning of corporate identity.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a research model to investigate corporate visual identity (CVI) management from an organisational perspective. It is assumed that characteristics of the organisation and of the way a CVI is managed will affect consistency of CVI.

The model was tested in a survey carried out among employees in 20 Dutch organisations. Structural equation modelling with AMOS was conducted to get insight into the various influences and relationships.

CVI management characteristics – socialisation processes related to CVI, knowledge of CVI strategy, and CVI tools and support – have a strong impact on the consistency of CVI, and organisational characteristics affect the way CVI is managed. With the exception of the openness and dynamics of an organisation, no supporting evidence was found for a direct relationship between organisational characteristics and CVI consistency.

CVI has been measured by the judgement of the respondents, all employees of the organisation concerned. Therefore the measure was the perceived consistency of CVI. Further research could include a visual audit and the perception of external stakeholders towards the visual identity. There was no distinction examined among the main corporate visual identity and sub‐ or product brands. The study was conducted in the Netherlands, where the Dutch term huisstijl is unambiguous and clearly related to the corporate brand or identity. Future research can take different brands into account or can broaden the concept of CVI (including cultural aspects, language, rituals, myths, etc.).

The results indicate that CVI management matters, that CVI management is related to more general organisational characteristics, but that communication managers nevertheless have a considerable amount of freedom in determining the way they manage their CVI.

Corporate visual identity has received little attention in research and hardly been studied at all from the perspective of this paper. This paper has value to both researchers in the fields of corporate identity and organisational identity, as well as professionals involved in managing the corporate identity.

This study aims to evaluate the significance of the corporate website favorability notion and examines its factors in developing competitive advantage in the context of retail and service settings in the UK and Russia.

Based on the attribution, social identity and signaling theories, this study adopted the qualitative exploratory approach by conducting 14 interviews with retail experts and eight focus groups with retail users in the UK and Russia, combined with experts in website design, communication and marketing.

The study findings indicated that it is crucial to build and maintain a favorable corporate website that reveals the corporate identity as part of the overall company strategy. The study suggests that navigation, visual, information, usability, customization, security, availability, website credibility, customer service, perceived corporate social responsibility and perceived corporate culture are the factors of corporate website favorability that contribute to the company’s competitive advantage. The findings show that consumers from Russia as well as from the UK found the significance of a favorable corporate website (i.e. corporate website favorability), as well as the factors affecting corporate website favorability. However, consumers in the UK are more critical and demanding in the level of expectation of the website overall and put more weight than consumers from Russia on the perceived corporate social responsibility, perceived corporate culture, customer service and website credibility.

Corporate website favorability should be adopted by the companies, as part of the overall corporate identity management. Furthermore, it is advised to take into consideration the variations in the level of importance of the factors of corporate website favorability in different countries. The findings of this study suggest that this investigation will make a considerable managerial contribution to the understanding of a company’s decision-makers, communication professionals and website specialists about the building of a favorable corporate website in line with corporate identity strategy of the company.

There has been little systematic study of the effect of corporate websites on consumer evaluations of the websites; also, there is a lack of research with regard to the factors that contribute to the development of a favorable corporate website (i.e. corporate website favorability). This is the first study of its kind to find the effect of corporate website favorability in Russia, representing a non-western country, and the UK, representing a western country. Therefore, it contributes to the corporate visual identity literature by presenting the corporate website favorability construct and demonstrating the factors that influence corporate website favorability.