COMPANY IDENTITY AND MARKETING: AN INTEGRATIVE FRAMEWORK

AUTHORS: Avinandan Mukherjee Hongwei He
SOURCE:Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice; spring 2008, 16,2; ABI/ınform Global pg.11

SUMMARY: The paper is an integrative framework that links company identity with marketing performance. The start point of the writers is corporate level marketing. Apart from traditional product-level marketing strategies, they argue that firm based marketing is very important. They summarize their basic arguement as the performance of company identity derive from stakeholders’ and beholders perception of the firm so in order to be succesfull, the company identity from the point of view of the managers and customers or employees and customers has to be very well defined. According to the article, it is possible to show the company identity in different ways by different marketing applications.
It is told in the article that, for the firms to be able to foresee what to do they have to have three parts to keep in mind. First, The environment of the organization, assumptions on the environment of the organization and the specific mission of the company. The second part of the theory of bussines s is related with the organizational mission, which is core competent identity of a company. Another point in theory of bussiness shows that the identity of a company is closely related to teh marketing concept through product-market choice and strategic choicess of segmentation, targeting dand positioning in the perceptions of stakeholders and Networks.
According to the writers for a firm to succeed, besides anything, there is one question that needs to be defined and that is ‘What is company identity and how should it be? The answer for that question is First, identity should reflect the esence, second has to distinguish from others. Third, it has to show continium during time.
The reason why Company identity is told to be critical for marketing is because it defines the esence of a company and locates a company within customers, employees and other stakeholders. İnstead of simgle barnd it is the line of the company. They believe that the identity anf the brands has to be consistent with marketing decisions and campaigns.
According to the article, there are four dimensions of company identity in the literature. Identity attractiveness,perceived identity similarity, perceived identity distinctiveness and perceived identity prestige. In relation to these concepts it is argued that the companies performance is also related with its identity as it has effects on beholders perception. Then the writers outline three types of company identity that effects company performance and these are MPCI, EPCI and CPCI.
MPCI is, company identity and senior managers. It is stated in the article that company identity does effect performance applications in three routes. First is related to managerial recognition and strategic process. The second is about the senior managers’ identification with the company and its behavioral outcomes and the third is the normative and legitimating power of identity that creates desirability. They support that top management’s performance is directly related with the company performance and company strategic performance depends on good understanding of the internal dinamics first among the shareholders and managers then the rest of the firm.
The second identity effect is EPCI, Company identity and organizational Employyes. It is emphasised that the company identity is directly influenced by the identity from employees’ perspective. The difference between MPCI and EPCI is the employees being organizational employees rather than managers. According to the article EPCI is important as it has psychological attachment with the organization and do increase organizational commitment, cooperation, loyalty and job satisfaction.
Thier and the last identity effect is CPCI, Company identity and customers. According to the article, company identity has an impact on performance from customers’ perspective. It is known that the idea of brand is very important for customers attidudes in choosing that company, but it is also seen that not only a single barnd but customers tend to identify with the focal organization if they perceive that the identity of the company is attractive. As a result of this, customers trnd to be more loyal to company and promote the company to other people.
The article also states that these three factors are linked together and reinforce each other. MPCI influences CPCI via corporate communication, CPCI in return can influence senior managers perception of identity. Furthermore, MPCI influence EPCI by treating employyed as internal customers by in-company communications and that helps the managers to have feedback and get opinion from the employees. Also, EPCI as the face of the company is in interplay with CPCI. Customers does also influence EPCI because the employees take feedback directly from the customer and in return brings it to the managers.
Contributions to marketing theory , theoretical and methodological approaches to understand company identity has to be strengthened. Also, new theoretical structures that define and construct dimensions of company identity and marketing has to be studied.furthermore on measuring the identity of the company they emphasise the need to develop more comprehensive and holistic company identity. The way to do a such development , they recommend reviewing existing concepts, conducting qualitative interwievs, developing and testing initial items and validating each and every item from qualitative and quantitative studies.
In the application of company identity to real life, authors state that today many firms take part in mergers and acquisitions so the analysisis of company identity and competitive positioning is crutial The writers state that misperception of identity gives the companies real harm so they argue that, identity perception is something that varies from culture to culture so every culture has to be measured differently and in accordance with their own framework. They also state that the application of corporate identity has to be evaluated on all macro and micro levels and from normative and pozitive perceptions. The possible problems in defining company identity is listed as solid understanding of identity, overidentification of the company or existing identity no longer appealing or obsolote.

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