The Impact of Corporate Identity Structure on Corporate Identity Building: A Framework for Further Research

Although the concept of corporate identity (CI) has been of interest to marketing practitioners for the last three decades, only recently has it attracted the serious attention of marketing academics such as Dacin and Brown (2002) who have defined CI as “…..those intended characteristics of an organization that decision-makers and marketers within the group choose to promote to their internal and external constituents” (p.254). However, there appears to be little attempt in the literature to explore an organisations’ CI in relation to its Corporate Identity Structure (CIS). Corporations use CI to distinguish themselves from their competitors focusing primarily on aspects that are distinctive and enduring. It provides the primary points of differentiation and as such can be critical to the success of companies (Melewar and Jenkins 2002). Particularly, the role of CI in service industries poses a greater challenge primarily because of the four unique characteristics, i.e. intangibility, inseparability of production and consumption, heterogeneity and perishability - that distinguish services from goods (Zeithaml et al. 1996, Gronroos 1990, Clemes et al. 2000). Most of the literature on CI deals with manufacturing companies and the role that CI plays in the production of tangible products. While stakeholders in a manufacturing company can directly perceive the identity of the organisation through the product offered due to lack of objective and measurable attributes in evaluating the identity of the firm, those in a service organisation must select some tangible extrinsic cues and attributes to form their judgements. This paper attempts to address the managers’ perceptions of CIS in the service industries and how their perceptions influence CI of an organisation.