Corporate Image as an Impression Formation Process: Prioritizing Personal, Organizational, and Environmental Audience Factors

Abstract

In contrast to established, long-held conclusions that corporate image is determined mostly by the organization, recent findings suggest that image is also determined by both environmental and personal factors of the audience member. Studies suggest, further, that these factors combine in novel ways as a part of an impression-formation process and produce an overall perceptually-based audience image. This study's purpose was to further explore the factors that make up an audience's perception of corporate image and any underlying structure of these individual factors. Further, the combined factors were tested for their relative influence in an overall positive or negative image(s) of the organization. A total sample of 427 respondents were contacted by telephone and responded to a questionnaire that required them to rate the relative influence of 11 sources of information found to be most important in influencing the public's corporate image of State Farm Insurance. These sources of influence were identified in a previous ethnographic study (Moffitt, 1994). In this study, the influence sources were submitted to an exploratory factor analysis to understand the underlying structure of the individual sources. The factor analysis resulted in three factors: Organization-Controlled, Personal, and Business. These factors explained over 60% of the variance. After establishing the underlying structure, an overall dependent corporate image measure was included in a hierarchical forced entry regression analysis using a three-step structure for the independent variables. On Step 1, the respondents' occupation and region of residence were entered as a partial representation of a preceding environmental factor. Second, a measure of personal impact, the respondent's judgment of the amount of impact the respondent had felt personally, was entered as an intervening second-stage personal factor. Third, the three factors representing the sources of influence were entered simultaneously. The final regression model accounted for nearly 60% of the variance in the dependent variable. All of the independent variables were significant predictors of overall corporate image. Implications for the theoretical understanding of organizational image are discussed.