Making Sense of Stakeholder Brand Reputations: A Venn-diagram Approach to Visualize Cross-stakeholder Homogeneity and Fit with Intended Reputation

Marketing science and practice acknowledge that a brand’s reputation amongst consumers is essential for success. However, brand reputation may also affect other stakeholders’ exchange relationships with a brand. We discuss (1) the relevance of a multi-stakeholder approach to brand management, (2) different measurement approaches that allow for a cross-stakeholder evaluation of brand reputations and (3) results of an international study on employee and
consumer reputation of a corporate brand with some 1500 respondents respectively. Our results suggest that brand reputation of different stakeholders may show substantial overlap and divergence at the same time. When relating these stakeholders’ reputations to management-intended brand reputation, we find that some reputation elements have permeated to none, one or both groups, but also that the two stakeholder groups may agree about reputation elements which are not intended. We discuss how brand management can and why it should use such results in their brand-building efforts.