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Corporate marketing: insights and integration drawn from corporate branding, corporate identity, corporate communication and visual identification
Edited by John M.T. Balmer, Avinandan Mukherjee, Stephen A. Greyser and Per Jenster
Introduction
For a variety of reasons, both academic and business interests in corporate identity have increased significantly in recent years. Organisations have realised that a strong identity can help them align with the marketplace, attract investment, motivate employees and serve as a means to differentiate their products and services. Thus, many organisations are striving to develop a distinct and recognisable identity. Certain characteristics of an efficacious corporate identity include a reputation for high quality goods and services, a robust financial performance, a harmonious workplace environment, and a reputation for social and environmental responsibility ([25] Einwiller and Will, 2002).
Identity is now widely recognised as an effective strategic instrument and a means to achieve competitive advantage ([52] Schmidt, 1995) and being researched by more academics and practitioners. However, the lack of a clear definition ([10] Balmer and Greyser, 2003) makes the research in corporate identity management area a formidable task ([36] Melewar and Jenkins, 2002), especially, in relation to determining the parameters of the research concept in guiding scholarly investigations ([10] Balmer and Greyser, 2003; [16] Cornelissen and Elving, 2003). This lack of clarity in the academic world is also reflected in the business world. Many executives confessed to having little knowledge of how to manage, control or even explicitly define the concept ([37] Melewar et al. , 2003).
In academic research, since corporate identity has been associated with different levels of organisational phenomena and practices i.e. the road from visual expressions to all expressions of the organisation ([16] Cornelissen and Elving, 2003), developing better measures to examine it as well as its components remain of considerable importance. Therefore there is a need for an in-depth analysis to decipher the essence of the corporate identity construct and its derivatives ([16] Cornelissen and Elving, 2003). However, the main aim of this paper is rather to develop a better understanding of corporate identity through examining the experiences and perceptions of managers. We review evaluations of the definitions of the corporate identity concept and elucidate the components of corporate identity based on the literature, and investigate empirically how corporate identity...