Shaping Corporate Brands: From Product Features to Corporate Mission

Product brands convey symbolic and tangible meanings, including association with the concrete features of the product. Corporate brands convey values and ideals that operate at a higher level: values and mission of the company. Products convey technical information, which is usually detached from the abstract values of the corporate brand. In this study we investigate if the technical features of products can express some dimensions of a corporate brand, namely the corporate mission. The literature on how consumers process numerical vs. verbal information suggests that if the technical features of a product are presented in verbal forms as opposed to numerical forms, they can better express the corporate mission of a company. We explore this hypothesis by adopting two online consumer surveys, and the results confirm that product can transmit some dimensions of the corporate mission. These results may help managers identify strategies to communicate the corporate values and mission through an integrated communication approach that would include both corporate communication and product brand.