The well-known and established slogan “The Customer is King” should be replaced by the more comprehensive maxim “The Stakeholder is King”. This is the central idea of an article published by Markus Renner, Co-Owner and Managing Partner of Branding-Institute and Co-Chairman of the International Brand & Reputation Community (INBREC), in the German business magazine „return“.

Corporate reputation to be managed professionally

The corporate reputation has a significant impact on the business success of any commercial organisation. This effect, which has been proven by empirical studies, can work both in the positive and negative direction as we can see in the decline in sales of Volkswagen diesel cars in the US in the wake of the “diesel gate”. In order to use positive effects of corporate reputation on business success and prevent negative ones reputation has to be professionally managed.

Stakeholders: A broader group than just customers

An up-to-date approach to measuring and managing corporate reputation is a causal-analytical one. It calculates causes and effects of corporate reputation based on evidence such as stakeholder surveys. When conducting these surveys it is crucial to include all important and relevant stakeholder groups and not only to focus on customers.

The English translation of the article can be downloaded here.

If you are interested in high-level discussions on corporate reputation please join Markus Renner’s LinkedIn group “Return on Reputation”.