Corporate identity (CI) or corporate image is a crucial theoretical concept at the confluence of business and psychology research that reflects how an organization presents its mission, activities, and potential to the public. A literature review article by Rutitis et al. (2012) clarifies how the general CI framework is aligned with the healthcare industry and its challenges. Some crucial findings revealing a large research gap in CI pertaining to healthcare include the striking heterogeneity of CI definitions across the existing literature and a scarcity of empirically tested CI management models that would anatomize CI in the healthcare sector (Rutitis et al., 2012). Despite being quite predictable due to healthcare’s differences from traditional businesses, these gaps, if left unaddressed, could have negative implications for healthcare marketing, for instance, limited knowledge on branding hospitals online or the pitfalls of target marketing in the medical industry. Therefore, the study’s value is based on how it problematizes the scientific community’s inability to make healthcare business research incorporate and adapt CI-related findings and empirical evidence.
Aside from pointing to an emerging crisis in healthcare research, the study definitely reveals certain sluggishness in extending CI studies and theories to keep pace with the ongoing “business fiction” of the public sector. For example, aside from healthcare, universities’ and entire educational systems’ CI practices remain poorly and superficially explored (Rutitis et al., 2012). Nevertheless, given a coherent corporate image’s tremendous benefits in improving any company’s public perception, relevant empirical evidence, including comparative analyses of CI management strategies’ effects on service user satisfaction in the public sector, could be conducive to user-centeredness in service organizations and providers. Basically, what proper CI management adds is the ability to develop a clear brand identity and express it consistently through relevant messages to the audience. With that in mind, the discussed literature review spots crucial improvement areas in business and management research.
References
Rutitis, D., Batraga, A., Muizniece, L., & Ritovs, K. (2012). Management of corporate identity dimensions in health care. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 58, 995-1003.