Many scientists analysed the importance of stakeholders on the ground of the interrelationship between an organization and stakeholders. Nevertheless, scientists do not define which stakeholders should be considered as the most or the least important. For this reason, the stakeholder grouping in accordance with their importance to the organization has been done. Stakeholders are divided into internal and external; primary and secondary; normative, functional, diffused and customers; regulatory, organizational, community and media; groups in the order of power and interest. In this paper, we also highlighted another stakeholder group, which we call a shadow group due to its illegal impact on the organization or industry. The analysis of stakeholder grouping initiated that while grouping stakeholders in accordance with their importance to the organization, it is worth to divide them into primary and secondary. Allocating the stakeholders to the primary and secondary groups unconsciously leads to the conclusion that primary stakeholders take the first, i.e. the most important place with regard to secondary stakeholders. It was observed that the scientists, acting on business interests, propose that even these stakeholders who find themselves in the same stakeholder group have unequal importance -the organizations give the priority to stakeholders, previously considered as the secondary. Consequently, because of these two different mainstream approaches of the theorists and the scientists, acting on business interests, it remains unclear what stakeholders should be attributed to which groups considering their importance to organization.
Mass production and information overload, which occurred in the 21st century, has made consumers look for individuality and exclusivity in everyday life. This need can be easily satisfied by making a decision to buy and giving preference to specific brands, which helps express satisfaction in fine and exclusive goods. During the economic crisis the demand for counterfeit copies of luxury goods has increased, which made the shadow economy grow. On the other hand, a paradox has been observed where demand for these items has not reduced despite growing consumer income. Hence it is important to better understand the intents of counterfeit luxury goods consumers, stimulating an increase in counterfeit items demand, and the factors that cause it. Different research topics are discussed in scientific literature on luxury goods counterfeit copies, however, a few main topics can be distinguished: consumers attitude towards luxury goods and their counterfeit copies; habits and causes of counterfeit copies purchasing; impact of counterfeit copies on luxury brands from the consumer's point of view; impact of luxury items counterfeit copies consumption on consumer's identity; factors, causing demand for counterfeit copies. The review of scientific research has shown that consumers' intent to buy counterfeit items is influenced by personal-demographic and psychographic; product, social and buying situation factor groups. The type of the article: Theoretical article.
When corporate reputation is analyzed from the perspective of relationship equity and communication, the analysis frequently appeals to expectations and experience of customers as the most important group of stakeholders. Yet in practice there are no methodologies of corporate reputation management of this kind that could be easily adapted and would capture the impact of reputation management decisions for sustainable customer confidence in the organization. Therefore, the research problem is structured as a question, i.e. what is the impact of corporate reputation on customer's confidence in the organization? The proposed hypothetic model of corporate reputation management embeds customer-characteristic factors of corporate reputation perception, qualities that are inherent in the efficient management of integrated communication and reputation, and consequences of corporate reputation management in relationship to specific changes of customer behavior. The model illustrates the following assumption. The positive experience of a customer that was obtained by means of the perceived economic and social value during the development of relationship, conditions the basic outcome of positive corporate reputation, i.e. consumer advocacy which becomes evident through: increasing customer loyalty to the organization; public representation, i.e. declared confidence of the customers and their commitments in respect of the organization; increasing need for cooperation, i.e. the wish of customers to share information, participate in conflict solving and seek for mutually favorable possibilities of relationship with the organization. The information, acquired during the empirical research, yields the conclusion that all customer perception-based reputation factors, i.e. quality of goods and services, emotional appeal, vision, leadership and social responsibility, have to be strengthened in communication practices.
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.
In scientific literature, the trust of key stakeholders is considered to be the base for the survival of organizations. In the context of the relation between corporate reputation and the trust of stakeholders, scientists agree on evident importance of corporate reputation for the development of stakeholder trust in the organization; however, there is a lack of recommendations suggesting how an organization should develop the trust of key stakeholders using corporate reputation. The article presents a summarized view on the relationship between the main dimensions of corporate reputation and the factors of key stakeholder trust in the organization. Such relationships reveal that it is purposeful to invoke corporate reputation in order to develop trust of key stakeholders. Also, the article states the relation between the factors determining different stakeholders' trust in the organization and different dimensions of corporate reputation based on which the trust of the key stakeholders of the organization should be developed. The result of the theoretical study is a developed conceptual model of key stakeholder trust development in terms of corporate reputation. The model will be applied in further empirical studies on the development of trust of the key stakeholders: customers, employees, shareholders and suppliers.
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