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Scale development and validation for measuring corporate brand associations

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Abstract

Past research shows that corporate brand associations – what individuals think about a company – influence consumer responses to a company and its products. Although an impressive amount of research has studied corporate brand associations, previous research has proceeded without a standardised, reliable and valid measure of the construct. The present study reports a multistep approach for the development and validation of a scale that captures full dimensionality of corporate brand associations from a customer-based perspective and is valid across different sectors. Potential dimensions and items are drawn from relevant literature. Surveys of 588 customers in the three different sectors such as services, durables and Fast Moving Consumer Goods are used to generate data. A 28-item, Likert-type scale is developed, which captures seven dimensions of corporate brand associations: corporate ability and growth, symbolic benefits, perceived external prestige, corporate ethics, corporate social responsibility, visual identity, and corporate communications. Multistep psychometric tests demonstrate that the scale is reliable and valid, and generalisable across different sectors. This scale would be useful to both researchers and practitioners, and would bring standardisation to research in the field of corporate branding.

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Correspondence to Mandeep Kaur Ghuman.

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Mann, B., Ghuman, M. Scale development and validation for measuring corporate brand associations. J Brand Manag 21, 43–62 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/bm.2013.22

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/bm.2013.22

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