Mapping Corporate Image in Corporate Marketing For Community

This paper is a preliminary research about Corporate Image (CI), specifically to observe the position of previous studies using Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and Systematic Mapping Studies (SMS). The purpose of this mapping research is to figure out the Corporate Image topic which has been studied earlier. The literature search was done on Scopus electronic database and Emerald Insight. Sixty eight (68) articles obtained in the form of scholarly journal fall into the category of inclusion. This study attempts to map 68 previous articles based on several variables, from general definition to involved-variables categories (Antecendent and Cosequences), and also map the article variables based on article theme group. This study has limitation in which the writers did not include the 6C criteria by Balmer and Geyser (2006). It is expected that future researches of SMS and SLR would involve this 6C’s concept. The writers also look forward to corporate image concept improvement for further studies. The result of Systematic Mapping Study illustrates the potential of exploring the current topic or sharpening the existing one. Keywords; Corporate Image, Corporate Marketing and 6C’s Concept. INTRODUCTION Discipline in the science of marketing faces a new paradigm which is oriented to theoretical approach proposed by corporate marketing: this term was first introduced by Balmer (1998), who later improved his proposals in several papers (Balmer, 2001, 2009; Balmer and Greyser, 2003, 2006; He dan Balmer, 2011; Balmer dan Gray, 2003, 2004). Corporate marketing approach reviews several variables in marketing mix and defines the 6C’s that represent basic concept to understand this new marketing discipline: 1. Character that refers to corporate identity, 2. Culture (Organizational Identity), 3. Covenant tends to corporate branding, 4. Conceptualizations by considering the reputation of the company or corporate image, 5. Communication refers to corporate communication and; 6. Constituencies which refers to the management of stakeholders (Balmer and Greyser, 2006). The close connection between all these concepts leads to the emergence of many approaches to study in the field of academic literature, many of these academic approaches failed to provide common definition globally and would complicate the Corporate Marketing understanding (Christensen and Askegaard 2001; Souiden et al., 2006; Walker, 2010). The most frequently discussed constructions in the context of Corporate Marketing are Corporate Image, Corporate Identity and Corporate Reputation. The construction of the thoughts of this Corporate Marketing is often overlapped and misunderstood even for professionals (Tankovic, 2015). This creates problems for academics and practitioners, especially in interdisciplinary research, as identity, image and reputation can be considered in a variety of areas, from public relations, organizational studies, marketing, and corporate governance to design and architecture. In the mid-20 th century, this field became an interesting topic for academics, which contributed a great theory to the topic. The term Corporate Image was first used in 1953 by Newman (Abratt, 1989: 64) when he formulated the problem by comparing and identifying the human personality and corporate image. © 2020 JETIR April 2020, Volume 7, Issue 4 www.jetir. org (ISSN-2349-5162) JETIR2004177 Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR) www.jetir. org 1316 Since then, the corporate image has evolved along with the emergence of sciences in various areas, specifically, corporate communication, corporate management and corporate marketing. As knowledge in this field evolves, the approaches to understand the corporate marketing also change, leading to a change in its theoretical representation: "overall impression produces in the minds of an organization's public“ (Barich and Kotler, 1991), “the result of the interaction of all the experiences, impressions, beliefs, feelings, and know-how that people have about a business” (Worcester, 1997), “overall impression in the minds of customers and original mental image that the audience has of a specific organization” (Gray and Balmer, 1998), “overall impression left on the mind of customers, as a gestalt and as an idiosyncratic cognitive configuration. Although dynamically interrelated with corporate reputation, corporate image independent upon a person's beliefs, feelings, ideas, and impressions, and is aided by the information provided by the company, as well as managerial attitudes, behavior, and philosophy” (Richard and Zhang, 2012). This definition proves that image is a set of perceptions created in the minds of general public. Image is used to create the personality of a company or product through positive preferences and attitudes or through negative associations and avoidance tendencies. Therefore, image is a cognitive representation of corporate, formed based on previous attitudes, opinions, and ideas that match the actual features. From a psychological perspective, an image represents a tendency to reduce a large number of meanings into conclusions, templates or stereotypes, thus simplifying individual relationship with their environment (Tanlovic, 2016). Wilkins and Huisman (2014) argued that over the years various terms had been combined with the corporate image construct: corporate associations and corporate evaluation (Brown and Dacin, 1997), corporate identity (Bhattacharya and Sen, 2003); corporate image (Brown et al., 2006); image (Barich and Kotler, 1991); organizational image (Hatch i Schultz, 1997); organizational reputation (Scott and Lane, 2000); and reputation (Bick, et al., 2003). Corporate image also can be interpreted from corporate identity (about what and how in the organization), created by using the perception of projected corporate identity with the hope to influence the buying intentions, desire to invest, or the desire to work in the company (Balmer, 1995; Van Riel, 1995). Abratt (1989: 63) argued that organizations "need to make a concerted effort to manage their corporate images” since the corporate image management is the key to gaining and maintaining public trust. He insisted on distinguishing between the functional meaning of corporate image (tangible assets, quality, reliability, service, and price) and its emotive meaning. Many researchers who have noted the importance of image concluded that image influences the way people perceive and react to certain things (Christensen and Askegaard, 2001; Dowling, 1998; Zaltman, 2003). Image aims to create the personality of a company or product through positive preferences and attitudes or negative associations and avoidance tendencies. Therefore, image is a powerful means of communication with people to attract them to act in a meaningful way, and image management is now at the strategic and tactical level in the current potential of marketing and management development. Wilkins and Huisman (2014: 2225) proposed that corporate image is a person’s immediate impression towards an organization, while corporate reputation is generated from corporate image as the stakeholders consistently run the corporate image from time to time. This is a conventionally seen review which observes corporate reputation in terms of time, since reputation is built based on previous experience, while image may change as a result of communication and other efforts. On the other hand, corporate image and reputation are generally considered as two different constructs which may be closely related. This connection sees that the ideas of image and reputation are two sociallyconstructed entities and derived from the perception of shareholders. Research Purpose This paper is a preliminary research about CI by considering the previous studies using the Systematic Mapping Studies (SMS) method. The electronic databases used in this research are Scopus © 2020 JETIR April 2020, Volume 7, Issue 4 www.jetir. org (ISSN-2349-5162) JETIR2004177 Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR) www.jetir. org 1317 and Emerald Insight. The expectation of this preliminary research is to stimulate other researchers to see the problems specifically in the areas of CI. Practically, this paper is also expected as a scientific contribution in line with the writers’ dissertation, especially in the research locus of general insurance company. Research Methodology The foundation of the research is obtained by observing the improvement of previous reports of researches, available in various literature database, therefore the writers are able to have an illustration of previous studies, and apply it in this research theme. In the process, the literature database is beneficial in reviewing the previous focus summary, empirical evidence, and research systematic approach (Kitchenham, 2004; (Petersen, Feldt, Mujtaba, & Mattsson, 2008). Systematic Literature Review (SLR) is one of the methods to preview previous researches by searching them in electronic database and further examining them, especially the research methodologies and results. SLR has three advantages compared with common literature review, which includes: SLR method is able to reduce the research bias, has a wider range so it is possible to obtain a general conclusion, and using meta-analysis for certain cases. In other hand, the weakness of SLR method is requiring a large number of efforts, time, and energy in executing it (Budgen et al., 2007). SLR is generally divided into two parts, Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) and Content Analysis (Bailey et al., 2007). For authors, SMS serves as the provider of previous research structure description, theme categorization, and visual image of summary. SMS also enables the writers to identify the irrelevant researches out of the ones with good quality (Budgen et al., 2007). In summary, SMS process is illustrated in Figure 1.1. below ; Reading Classification Selected A