Co-creating brand image and reputation through stakeholder’s social network

Abstract

By drawing on social identity and stakeholders’ theories, this paper seeks to examine how universities co-create and manage their brand image and brand reputation through tapping into internal-stakeholders’ social network. This research utilises explanatory research design at the preliminary stage, and the subsequent model is examined via a positivist survey carried out among higher education internal stakeholders in the UK. The results show that the relationship between navigation design of the website, usability of the website and customization of the website are not significant from students’ perspective, whereas all those are significant from employees’ perspective. Furthermore, the relationship between logo and co-creation behaviour is not significant from employees’ perspective while it is significant from students’ perspective. University website is the most important marketing tool to attract students and other stakeholders. Therefore, these findings have significant implications for higher education branding and marketing managers aiming to design appropriate communication tools with a view to actively engage students and employees in a co-creation process to improve their products, services and brand image.