Modelling the impact of corporate reputation on customers' behaviour

The research aims to develop and to test a conceptual model to measure corporate reputation and assesses its impact on altering customers' normal behaviour. The findings add to the existing literature by empirically demonstrating that corporate reputation should be interpreted as a reflective construct that can be measured by the means of 25 items, grouped in seven major factors. The analysis validated a medium-to-high impact of reputation on customers' loyalty, word-of-mouth, and adoption of new product or service introductions, while the desire to pay a premium price was rejected. This study explains why executive managers should embrace corporate reputation as an imperative for the company's efforts to influence customers' behaviours and ultimately to outpace competitors. It also provides the executive management with an actionable tool to map out the corporate issues that need to be addressed and proved that companies can shorten the path to purchase by means of reputation, without a huge cost.