CORPORATE REPUTATION AND CUSTOMER LOYALTY OF SOAP DEALERS IN PORT HARCOURT
Dike, Lawrence Bekwele& Henry Origbo
Department of Marketing
Ignatius Ajuru University of Education, Rumuolumeni, Port Harcourt
ABSTRACT
Corporate reputation has attracted interest from a wide range of academic disciplines. It isalso a growing focus for business and media attention. This paper examines the construct of corporate reputation, first by untangling the terminological problems that have been caused by the interdisciplinary nature of much of the earlier work in the area. The construct ofreputation and the allied constructs of image and identity are each reviewed. A structure is proposed in which the three constructs can be seen as labeling different but allied concepts.The study then move on to consider how reputation has been measured. The paper uncovers considerable confusion in the use of what might appear to be basic terms and links this to a subsequent lack of grounded measurement tools in the sector, until relatively recently. Witha clearer understanding of the construct of corporate reputation and the allied constructs of image and identity, researchers are now well placed to test the relationships widely claimed by practitioners between corporate reputation and other variables such as commercialperformance and employee and customer satisfaction. The review ends by illustrating some of the issues that can be assessed from the basis of a clearer conceptualization of reputation. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to analyse return research instrument. Hypotheses were tested using the Spearman ranked order correlation. Findings reveal strong relationship between corporate reputation with corporate image and identity. Further study can expand the horizon by looking at other sector other than the soap dealers market.
Key Words: Corporate Reputation, Corporate Loyalty, Soap Dealers
