Impact of Corporate Reputation Dimensions on Consumer Trust

Abstract

As global and local crises continue to destabilize stakeholders' trust in organizations, they need to find a long-term solution to the problem of declining trust. A critical marketing task for the sustainability of any business is to focus on the organization's reputation as a valuable, sustainable, and intangible asset of the organization. Growing trust in business is associated with corporate reputation that highlights company’s values and beliefs, shows the ways the company is trying to achieve its goals, to fulfil consumers’ expectations and its commitments. In some cases, a company does not even have to try to earn stakeholder trust as this function is performed by corporate reputation that develops positive stakeholders’ attitude towards the company as a reliable subject in the relationship. An analysis of the organization’s reputation and stakeholder trust in the organization revealed a lack of a systematic approach to how the reputation of one organization affects the trust of customers. The research focuses on the issue of consumer trust, consumer being one of the most important stakeholders. Differences in the impact of corporate reputation dimensions on consumer trust are noticed in different sectors, which creates the need for in-depth study of the issue. The aim of the article is to estimate the impact of corporate reputation on consumer trust and to determine which dimensions of corporate reputation affect different types of consumer trust. Empirical research findings are based on the case of pharmacy network in Lithuania. The pharmacy network is chosen for analysis due to the phenomenon that has appeared in the market, i.e., over the years decreasing trust in companies of one sector (pharmaceutical, in this case) has been unjustly identified with the situation in the other sector (pharmacy), which results in difficulties faced when building corporate reputation.