IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/igg/jebr00/v15y2019i2p22-43.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

ICT and Corporate Image: The Customer's Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Susan J. Winter

    (University of Maryland, USA)

  • Elizabeth Sharer

    (Francis Marion University, USA)

  • Hari K. Rajagopalan

    (Francis Marion University, USA)

  • Connie Marie Gaglio

    (San Francisco State University, USA)

Abstract

As new ICT products appear on the market, many managers choose to adopt them without clear evidence of the productivity benefits often claimed by vendors. Some may trust or hope that the promised benefits do eventually materialize, but others may adopt them because of ICT's symbolic meaning. This article investigates the links between ICT, corporate image, and purchase decisions or other forms of support among prospective customers, a previously neglected external stakeholder group. This article presents an experiment testing the links between IT, corporate image, and support behavior among customers. The results show that there is a strong link between conspicuous use of IT artifacts and corporate image leading to support behavior among customers. Social meaning of IT indirectly affects customer support and firm survival. This explains why savvy managers adopt new IT products that are consistent with their desired corporate images without clear evidence of the productivity benefits. Implications for theory, practice and future research are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Susan J. Winter & Elizabeth Sharer & Hari K. Rajagopalan & Connie Marie Gaglio, 2019. "ICT and Corporate Image: The Customer's Perspective," International Journal of E-Business Research (IJEBR), IGI Global, vol. 15(2), pages 22-43, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:igg:jebr00:v:15:y:2019:i:2:p:22-43
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://services.igi-global.com/resolvedoi/resolve.aspx?doi=10.4018/IJEBR.2019040102
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:igg:jebr00:v:15:y:2019:i:2:p:22-43. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journal Editor (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.igi-global.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.