Customer-Based Corporate Reputation: A Study of Supermarket Customers
This paper deals with a study on how supermarket customers in a developing country perceive the corporate reputation of a store they have bought from for a long period of time. The abridged customer-based corporate reputation (CBCR) scale of Walsh, Beatty
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he two best-known and recently published customer-based corporate reputation (CBCR) scales are that of Beatty and Walsh (2007) and Walsh, Beatty and Shiu (2009). Walsh and Beatty (2007) deems corporate reputation as a multidimensional construct and define customer-based reputation (CBCR) as “the customer's overall evaluation of a firm based on his or her reactions to the firm's goods, services, communication activities, interactions with the firm and/or its representatives or constituencies (such as employees, management, or other customers) and/or known corporate activities.” Three service firm types in the USA served as the testing ground for the 2007 CBCR scale. The studies resulted in a fivedimensional scale with the following five dimensions: Customer Orientation, Good Employer, Reliable and Financially Strong Company, Product and Service Quality, and Social and Environmental Responsibility. Twenty eight items measured the five dimensions. An online survey of customers in one of three categories: banking services (32% of the respondents), retailing (32% of the respondents), or fast-food restaurants (36% of the respondents) formed the sample for the 2007 CBCR study. The customers had to respond to items in respect of their current provider of banking, retailing or fast-food services. It is not clear from the reported information in which industry or industries the retailing provider belonged to. Germany and the United Kingdom provided the markets to test the 2009 scale. The German study focused on customers of Internet service firms. Respondents had to select an Internet firm with which they recently transacted from one of three categories: brokers such as eBay (26.4% of the respondents), information providers such as Yahoo and Google (17% of the respondents), or online merchants such as Amazon (56.6% of respondents). An online survey was used for data collection. The study in United Kingdom required respondents to complete an online survey in regards to their current provider in one of three industries, namely banking services (40% of the respondents), retailing (30% of the respondents), or fast-food restaurants (30% of the respondents). Similar to the 2007 study, the industry or industries of the retailing provider is not clear. The 2009 study resulted in a CBCR scale with five-dimensions that are similar to those of the 2007 scale but limited to 15 items in total. OBJECTIVE OF THE PAPER The primary purpose of this paper is to report on a study undertaken to replicate the 2009 shortened version of the customerbased corporate reputation scale of Walsh, Beatty and Shiu in the supermarket industry of a developing country. The research and findings reported here are also in response to Walsh et al.’s call in 2009 to conduct further studies amongst different populations in other countries. This research also heed to Hunter's (2001) call for more replication studies in the field in diverse service contexts. Furthermore, very few studies have attended to how firms comprehend and measure corporate reputation as perceiv
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