Don’t cry over spilt milk: a review on consumer-based corporate reputation in private ophthalmology services

Abstract

A growing interest has been identified in defining and measuring corporate reputation in both business and academia. Monitoring and managing the intangible assets of an organization is an important matter and the most investigated intangible asset is reputation. In healthcare services, and implicitly, in ophthalmology services, corporate reputation has generated many controversial debates, due to their characteristics such as intangibility, variability, perishability, and inseparability. Reputation can be defined as a synthesis of opinions, perceptions, and attitudes of an organization's stakeholders. In ophthalmology services, corporate management experts are more aware of the importance of corporate reputation and its implications on an organization's performance. Consumers of private ophthalmology services are the primarily generators of revenues and they place great value on their health and minimize the perceived risks of the services by trusting a healthcare organization's reputation. Consequently, ophthalmology services have been characterized by high-involvement and emotional vulnerability. Hence, consumer-based reputation in the context of private ophthalmology services encompasses affective responses, cognitive responses, the past experiences of consumers as well as their behavioral intentions. However, consumer-based corporate reputation is the sum of the existing consumer's perceived reputation and the potential consumer's perceived reputation. In ophthalmology services, corporate reputation experts recommend building a reputation focused on experiential sustainability, which is very difficult to achieve as it implies responsibility, frugality and sacrifice.