A corporate image refers to how a business is perceived. It is a generally accepted image of what a company stands for. In creating corporate image, marketing experts use public relations and other forms of promotion to suggest a mental picture to the public. Typically, a corporate image is designed to be appealing to the public, so that the company can spark an interest among consumers, create share of mind, generate brand equity, and thus facilitate product sales.
A corporation's image is not solely created by the company. Other contributors to a company's image could include news media, journalists, labor unions, environmental organisations, and other NGOs.
Corporations are not the only form of organization that create these types of images. Governments, charitable organizations, criminal organizations, religious organizations, political organizations, and educational organizations all tend to have a unique image, an image that is partially deliberate and partially accidental, partially self-created and partially exogenous.
Famous quotes containing the words corporate and/or image:
“The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity—much less dissent.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“What is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the fruit of two sentiments spontaneously blended?”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)