The Influence of Heuristic judgments in Social Media on Corporate Reputation: A Study in Spanish Leader Companies

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article should not have been submitted do Sustainability. This journal explores the likelihood of cultural, environmental, economic and social sustainability for human beings. You article, while interesting and surely publishable, has nothing to do with Sustainability, even under the broadest definition of the term (i.e. related to corporate social responsibility).  You should publish this article in a journal like Corporate Reputation Review.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. We have revised our paper in light of your comment. It is evident from the existing literature that there are three main dimensions of sustainability, namely: (i) environment sustainability; (ii) economic sustainability and (iii) social sustainability as the determinants of corporate reputation. See References in the new version of the manuscript. This contribution to Sustainability is according to the Special Issue focused on ‘Social Media Influence on Consumer Behaviour. The main aim of this specific Special Issue is ‘to deepen our understanding of the changes that the use of social media has brought about both with respect to the consumer and to organizations and companies’ with scientific papers that cover (but are not limited to) the following topics: economic impact of social media on results, financing, etc. In terms of the Call for Papers regarding to this Special Issue, ‘(…) by allowing (consumer) to generate content capable of not only influencing the behavior of other agents, but also affecting the reputation of companies’.

Reviewer 2 Report

However, evidences and measurements of some concepts related to corporate 39 reputation are difficult to get. For this reason, developing same theoretical and empirical frameworks 40 is very important in order to understand corporate reputation considering a comprehensive starting 41 point based on the Business and Management literature review.

Managers and CEOs have to take into account particularly what changes 44 have to be done in order to increase success and corporate reputation

regarding to decisions

their companies and corporates

Due to the majority of studies in Business are referred to corporate reputation,

The purpose of this paper is to facilitate 56 relatively simple conceptual and empirical frameworks, drawing in particular on aspects and 57 concepts based on the literature on Business and Management pertaining to corporates and 58 companies.

described by [21] (p. 71 32), [22] (p. 14).

According to this new concept, soon aroused interest

This view coincides with Charles Fombrun’s definition of reputation as 113 “[…] a perceptual representation of a company’s past actions and future prospects that describes the 114 firm’s overall appeal to all of its key constituents when compared with leading rivals”. It is a force 115 that attracts people toward the firm or repels them away from it [26] (p. 72).

You cannot start a sentence with a number for an author as you do many places, such as [29] defends an integral view of reputation comprising the organization’s corporate behavior, 122 together It is not helpful for the reader not to have the names of the references in the paper for recognition.

You need to define the concept according to the disciplines in 177, especially management and marketing differences.

You need to define and identify stakeholders,

189-203 is not clear in application to the hypothesis.

 

"Managing and building corporate reputation in companies and organizations means actively 384 influencing the impression that business leaves on stakeholders and shareholders’ opinions" The source of the information is important and is not measured here. Corporations push out information to the media, but they also listen to what stakeholders are saying and respond to that information (or misinformation) as the case may be. It is not clear what communication is being used here to determine reputation.  Negative news followed by corrective news may enhance reputation because the company is paying attention to the stakeholder.  No company today has only positive communication in the media. There has never been an argument that positive media did not matter to reputation.  The issue in the last ten years is that because of the internet and social media, corporations no longer control the communication that stakeholders see and hear as they did in the past.  Today a false story on social media (see Pampers or Nestle), can damage reputation and harm share price, and companies must spend time and money to monitor what is on the media. Building back the reputations requires increased communication fro the corporations.

Line 457  What is the correlation of sympathy to reputation.  This does not fit your earlier definition.

"Managing and building corporate reputation in companies and organizations means actively 384 influencing the impression that business leaves on stakeholders and shareholders’ opinions." On what is this based in the data?

"diminish the level of uncertainty 479 associated to several managerial decisions adopted by agents planning communication topics and 480 the repositioning of companies and businesses." This is not addressed in the study.

The references are very old for this type of study because the internet and social media have had an increasing influence on corporate reputation in the past decade. 

"Therefore, the study’s specific empirical objectives are the following: 215
• To investigate whether there is a significant relationship between the social and mass media 216 news items about a company and its reputation. 217
• To analyze what type of news items and heuristic judgments have the greatest impact on 218 corporate reputation over time."

Where are example for the second bullet? What are the heuristic judgments?   The results for the hypotheses need to be described more thoroughly.  Since companies like Coca-Cola, Nestle and Danon are multi-national, how do you distinguish between reputation in Spain and global reputation?  An action may have happened in another country, but stakeholders in Spain heard or read about it in the media and their view changes. El Corte Inglés operates in Europe and Africa, so the basis for reputation and heuristic judgments may be different.

The grammatical and sentence errors in the paper must be corrected.

Author Response

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

However, evidences and measurements of some concepts related to corporate 39 reputation are difficult to get. For this reason, developing same theoretical and empirical frameworks 40 is very important in order to understand corporate reputation considering a comprehensive starting 41 point based on the Business and Management literature review.

Managers and CEOs have to take into account particularly what changes 44 have to be done in order to increase success and corporate reputation

regarding to decisions

their companies and corporates

Due to the majority of studies in Business are referred to corporate reputation,

The purpose of this paper is to facilitate 56 relatively simple conceptual and empirical frameworks, drawing in particular on aspects and 57 concepts based on the literature on Business and Management pertaining to corporates and 58 companies.

described by [21] (p. 71 32), [22] (p. 14).

According to this new concept, soon aroused interest.

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. The new version of the manuscript has been revised according to your suggestions.

This view coincides with Charles Fombrun’s definition of reputation as 113 “[…] a perceptual representation of a company’s past actions and future prospects that describes the 114 firm’s overall appeal to all of its key constituents when compared with leading rivals”. It is a force 115 that attracts people toward the firm or repels them away from it [26] (p. 72).

You cannot start a sentence with a number for an author as you do many places, such as [29] defends an integral view of reputation comprising the organization’s corporate behavior, 122 together It is not helpful for the reader not to have the names of the references in the paper for recognition.

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. Your suggestions are appropriate and useful to us in order to improve considerably the quality of the manuscript. We have revised our paper in light of your comments. The new version of the manuscript has been revised according to your suggestions and the instructions for authors.

You need to define the concept according to the disciplines in 177, especially management and marketing differences.

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. Your suggestions are appropriate and useful to us in order to improve considerably the quality of the manuscript. We have revised our paper in light of your comments. The new version of the manuscript has been revised according to your suggestions.

You need to define and identify stakeholders,

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. Your suggestions are appropriate and useful to us in order to improve considerably the quality of the manuscript. We have revised our paper in light of your comments. The new version of the manuscript has been revised according to your suggestions.

189-203 is not clear in application to the hypothesis.

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. Your suggestions are appropriate and useful to us in order to improve considerably the quality of the manuscript. We have revised our paper in light of your comments. The new version of the manuscript has been revised according to your suggestions.

"Managing and building corporate reputation in companies and organizations means actively 384 influencing the impression that business leaves on stakeholders and shareholders’ opinions" The source of the information is important and is not measured here. Corporations push out information to the media, but they also listen to what stakeholders are saying and respond to that information (or misinformation) as the case may be. It is not clear what communication is being used here to determine reputation.  Negative news followed by corrective news may enhance reputation because the company is paying attention to the stakeholder.  No company today has only positive communication in the media. There has never been an argument that positive media did not matter to reputation.  The issue in the last ten years is that because of the internet and social media, corporations no longer control the communication that stakeholders see and hear as they did in the past.  Today a false story on social media (see Pampers or Nestle), can damage reputation and harm share price, and companies must spend time and money to monitor what is on the media. Building back the reputations requires increased communication fro the corporations.

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. Your suggestions are appropriate and useful to us in order to improve considerably the quality of the manuscript. We have revised our paper in light of your comments. The new version of the manuscript has been revised according to your suggestions.

Line 457  What is the correlation of sympathy to reputation.  This does not fit your earlier definition.

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. Your suggestions are appropriate and useful to us in order to improve considerably the quality of the manuscript. We have revised our paper in light of your comments. The new version of the manuscript has been revised according to your suggestions.

"Managing and building corporate reputation in companies and organizations means actively 384 influencing the impression that business leaves on stakeholders and shareholders’ opinions." On what is this based in the data?

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. Your suggestions are appropriate and useful to us in order to improve considerably the quality of the manuscript. We have revised our paper in light of your comments. The new version of the manuscript has been revised according to your suggestions.

"diminish the level of uncertainty 479 associated to several managerial decisions adopted by agents planning communication topics and 480 the repositioning of companies and businesses." This is not addressed in the study.

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. Your suggestions are appropriate and useful to us in order to improve considerably the quality of the manuscript. We have revised our paper in light of your comments. The new version of the manuscript has been revised according to your suggestions.

The references are very old for this type of study because the internet and social media have had an increasing influence on corporate reputation in the past decade. 

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. Your suggestions are appropriate and useful to us in order to improve considerably the quality of the manuscript. We have revised our paper in light of your comments. The new version of the manuscript has been revised according to your suggestions.

"Therefore, the study’s specific empirical objectives are the following: 215
• To investigate whether there is a significant relationship between the social and mass media 216 news items about a company and its reputation. 217
• To analyze what type of news items and heuristic judgments have the greatest impact on 218 corporate reputation over time."

Where are example for the second bullet? What are the heuristic judgments?   The results for the hypotheses need to be described more thoroughly.  Since companies like Coca-Cola, Nestle and Danon are multi-national, how do you distinguish between reputation in Spain and global reputation?  An action may have happened in another country, but stakeholders in Spain heard or read about it in the media and their view changes. El Corte Inglés operates in Europe and Africa, so the basis for reputation and heuristic judgments may be different.

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. Your suggestions are appropriate and useful to us in order to improve considerably the quality of the manuscript. We have revised our paper in light of your comments. The new version of the manuscript has been revised according to your suggestions.

The grammatical and sentence errors in the paper must be corrected.

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. Your suggestions are appropriate and useful to us in order to improve considerably the quality of the manuscript. We have revised our paper in light of your comments. The new version of the manuscript has been revised according to your suggestions.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper is interesting. My recommendations:

Delete reference to Collin´s dictionary

Remove additional information from academic positions (Villafañe and Fombrun and Cees Van Riel)

Possible mistake: 2.2 appears in H1 (p.4)

Why the H2? If they are correlated some years with others, what is intended to be demonstrated? Reflexions about your idea.

I have a question about results / image, are they used as synonyms? Could the result be for example financial?

 

Why is heuristic judgment not reflected in any hypothesis? In the paper heuritic judgments are very important. They appear in the title and conclusions are written, but not in the hypotheses. I'm not sure how cognitive biases influences the news

 

Why choose Bankia, Campofrío, Danone ... if they have not had such relevant positions in the Merco ranking as Inditex or El Corte Ingles… are interest of the researchers? Limitation?

In the Merco rankings, there are years in which companies have not appeared, eg. Campofrío 2008 to 2012-- How has it been solved empirically?

I recommend papers in case they are useful:

 

Gürel, P. A. (2014). A strategic approach to reputation management and its reflections on sustainable competitiveness. International Journal of Research in Business and Social Sciences, 3(2), 31–55.

Hall, R. (1992). The strategic analysis of intangible resources. Strategic Management Journal, 13, 135–144.

Hillebrand, C. y Money, K. (2007). Corporate responsibility and corporate reputation: Two separate concepts or two sides of the same coin? Corporate Reputation Review, 10, 261–277.

Martínez, I. M. y Olmedo, I. (2009). La medición de la reputación empresarial: problemática y propuesta. Investigaciones Europeas de Dirección y Economía de la Empresa, 15(2), 127–142.

Truñó, J. y Rialp, J. (2008). La responsabilidad social corporativa: gestión empresarial de un activo intangible. Revista de Contabilidad y Dirección, 7, 163–184

Author Response

The paper is interesting. My recommendations:

Delete reference to Collin´s dictionary

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. Your suggestions are appropriate and useful to us in order to improve considerably the quality of the manuscript. We have revised our paper in light of your comments. The new version of the manuscript has been revised according to your suggestions.

Remove additional information from academic positions (Villafañe and Fombrun and Cees Van Riel)

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. Your suggestions are appropriate and useful to us in order to improve considerably the quality of the manuscript. We have revised our paper in light of your comments. The new version of the manuscript has been revised according to your suggestions.

Possible mistake: 2.2 appears in H1 (p.4)

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. Your suggestions are appropriate and useful to us in order to improve considerably the quality of the manuscript. We have revised our paper in light of your comments. The new version of the manuscript has been revised according to your suggestions.

Why the H2? If they are correlated some years with others, what is intended to be demonstrated? Reflexions about your idea.

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. Your suggestions are appropriate and useful to us in order to improve considerably the quality of the manuscript. We have revised our paper in light of your comments. The new version of the manuscript has been revised according to your suggestions. According to our integrative theoretical framework, Literature Review and Hypotheses section has been rewritten. We add some sentences related to the two hypotheses H1 and H2.

I have a question about results / image, are they used as synonyms? Could the result be for example financial?

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. Your suggestions are appropriate and useful to us in order to improve considerably the quality of the manuscript. We have revised our paper in light of your comments. The new version of the manuscript has been revised according to your suggestions.

Why is heuristic judgment not reflected in any hypothesis? In the paper heuritic judgments are very important. They appear in the title and conclusions are written, but not in the hypotheses. I'm not sure how cognitive biases influences the news.

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. The concept of corporate reputation, defined as a mental representation of a company’s past actions and future prospects that describes the firm’s overall appeal to its key constituents, is an important quality signal and influences evaluators’ decision-making process. Particularly when information is scarce and uncertainty is high, the information asymmetry between firms and their external stakeholders creates a context wherein reputation is an important consideration in stakeholders’ evaluation. Therefore, cognitive biases influence the news on corporate reputation are critical in shaping evaluators’ perceptions and responses and ultimately, influencing a firm’s economic and financial performance.

Why choose Bankia, Campofrío, Danone ... if they have not had such relevant positions in the Merco ranking as Inditex or El Corte Ingles… are interest of the researchers? Limitation?

In particular, we choosed Bankia, Campofrío and Danone because of these three leader companies had corporate crises, that is, some negative events that triggered negative media coverage, generating widespread and negative perceptions among stakeholders. According to several authors, while corporate reputation has been widely studied, its effect on firm value during a crisis has been debated. For this reason, in our study we follow the literature and examine how heuristic judgements affect different positions of corporate reputation extending research on reputation as an intangible asset and thus, this term may play a value-preserving role in times of a negative event (see new version of the manuscript).

In the Merco rankings, there are years in which companies have not appeared, eg. Campofrío 2008 to 2012-- How has it been solved empirically?

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. Your suggestions are appropriate and useful to us in order to improve considerably the quality of the manuscript. We have revised our paper in light of your comments. The new version of the manuscript has been revised according to your suggestions.

I recommend papers in case they are useful:

Gürel, P. A. (2014). A strategic approach to reputation management and its reflections on sustainable competitiveness. International Journal of Research in Business and Social Sciences, 3(2), 31–55.

Hall, R. (1992). The strategic analysis of intangible resources. Strategic Management Journal, 13, 135–144.

Hillebrand, C. y Money, K. (2007). Corporate responsibility and corporate reputation: Two separate concepts or two sides of the same coin? Corporate Reputation Review, 10, 261–277.

Martínez, I. M. y Olmedo, I. (2009). La medición de la reputación empresarial: problemática y propuesta. Investigaciones Europeas de Dirección y Economía de la Empresa, 15(2), 127–142.

Truñó, J. y Rialp, J. (2008). La responsabilidad social corporativa: gestión empresarial de un activo intangible. Revista de Contabilidad y Dirección, 7, 163–184

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. Your suggestions are appropriate and useful to us in order to improve considerably the quality of the manuscript. We have included these references in the new version of the manuscript.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I think that the article has definitely been improved, but I do not think it is any more suitable for this journal than I did before. It is an excellent article for Corporate Reputation Review, however. It has little or nothing to do with Sustainability. I think we have to remain firm on only publishing articles that have relevance to the topic and our readers if we want to build a loyal following and gain credibility as a journal. I thought I was clear in my comments to the authors about this point. They seem to have revised along the lines of other reviewers, but they really did nothing to make it more publishable here.

Reviewer 2 Report

Rewrite is acceptable.

Reviewer 3 Report

thanks