The collective judgment people hold about a brand based on its actions, communications, products, and customer experiences.
Reputation influences trust, preference, and willingness to recommend.
Short and sweet:
The collective judgment people hold about a brand based on its actions, communications, products, and customer experiences.
Reputation influences trust, preference, and willingness to recommend.
See also: Public Relations, Online Review, Brand Equity
Brand reputation is the collective perception people hold about a company based on its actions, communications, and the experiences others report, shaped as much by word of mouth and reviews as by anything the brand says about itself. Unlike brand identity, which a company controls directly, reputation is largely built and maintained by outside opinion, which means it can shift quickly after a single high-profile incident, good or bad. Monitoring mentions, reviews, and sentiment across channels has become essential simply because reputation can change faster than a company can react to it manually.
United Airlines suffered lasting brand reputation damage after a viral video showed a passenger being forcibly removed from an overbooked flight, a single incident that shaped public perception for years afterward.
Patagonia has cultivated the opposite kind of standing, earning consistent trust and goodwill through visible environmental commitments that go well beyond marketing claims.
When Wells Fargo was caught opening unauthorized customer accounts, the resulting fallout cost the bank customers and executives long after the scandal itself had been resolved.