RepTrak™ Pulse: Conceptualizing and Validating a Short-Form Measure of Corporate Reputation

Abstract

Corporate reputations are of growing interest as intangible assets that provide firms with a competitive advantage in the marketplace. This article describes the development and validation of the RepTrak™ Pulse, an emotion-based measure of the corporate reputation construct that untangles the drivers of corporate reputation from measurement of the construct itself. The authors draw on signaling theory to conceptualize corporate reputation as a set of beliefs about companies. Qualitative research conducted in the US demonstrated the content validity of this measure of reputation. Quantitative studies with multiple samples of participants validated the simplified measure in different geographical locations and confirmed the measure's ability to assess perceptions across stakeholder groups. Specifically, the authors examined how the US general public thinks about companies, how Canadian doctors assess pharmaceutical companies, how US consumers rate energy companies, and how Danish transportation employees evaluate their own firm. To confirm its cross-cultural validity the authors collected and analyzed data from 17 countries from six continents. This article reports the results of these analyses, and demonstrates the reliability, internal validity, nomological validity and cross-cultural validity of the RepTrak™ Pulse scale as a short-form, etic measure of corporate reputation that can be used to facilitate cross-cultural research as well as online interviewing and survey-based data collection.