IntroductionCorporate-level marketi

Introduction
Corporate-level marketing – if understood as the broad managerial philosophy
whereby the corporate image, identity, and/or brand of a company are seen to be
central anchors or drivers for its strategies and management – has attracted
considerable interest in recent years. The growing interest has been manifest not only
in the marketing discipline (e.g. Balmer and Greyser, 2005; Bick et al., 2003; He, 2008;
Melewar and Karaosmanoglu, 2006a; Powell et al., 2007; Powell, 2007) but increasingly
also in the disciplines of general management and strategy (e.g. Balmer, 2009; Balmer
et al., 2009b; Cornelissen et al., 2007; He and Balmer, 2007; Melewar et al., 2005;
Mukherjee and Balmer, 2007; Rodrigues and Child, 2008), human resources
management (Martin, 2009; McGuire et al., 2007), corporate communications (Balmer
and Greyser, 2005; Balmer et al., 2009a; Einwiller and Will, 2002; Powell and Dodd,
2007; Stuart, 1999), and even business ethics (Borgerson et al., 2009; Fukukawa et al.,
2007; Balmer et al., 2007).
What these corporate marketing-related perspectives share as a basic assumption is
the notion that the various constituencies or stakeholders of a company essentially orient
their behaviours towards the company according to what they perceive about the
company’s identity and how they evaluate it – that is, according to perceived corporate
(brand) identity/image (see, for example, Balmer, 2009; Brown et al., 2006). Notably,
consistent with the inter-disciplinary work in the area, the role of the perceived corporate
identity as a driver of stakeholders’ behaviours is seen to be the case not only with the
company’s customers but also with other classes of stakeholders, such as prospective
and current employees, suppliers, business partners, etc.
Under scrutiny in the present article is the corporate marketing literature’s claim
that among other stakeholders, also investors orient their behaviours towards
companies according to perceived corporate images or identities (Balmer and Gray,
2003; Balmer et al., 2009b; Brown et al., 2006; Dowling, 2004; Hatch and Schultz, 2003;
Melewar et al., 2005). For instance, Hatch and Schultz (2003) note that the perception of
a corporate brand identity may affect various decisions and behaviours of external
constituencies, including decisions to invest in the company. Relatedly, also marketing
researchers in general (Lovett and MacDonald, 2005; Schoenbachler et al., 2004;
Aspara, 2009; Aspara et al., 2009), as well as researchers in (behavioural) finance
(Frieder and Subrahmanyam, 2005; Aspara and Tikkanen, 2008b), have recently
shown interest in the effects of individuals’ perceptions of companies’ brand images on
their investment behaviour.
However, while corporate marketing literature has made the broad claim that
perceived corporate identity could also attract investors, why exactly this would be the
case (and to what extent) has not been carefully scrutinised so far, neither theoretically
nor empirically. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to fill this research gap by
explicating theoretically as well as examining empirically how a company’s corporate
identity may influence individual investors’ willingness to invest in the company in the
stock market.
Being informed by the recent turn in the corporate marketing literature, whereby
theoretisations are linked to fundamental social psychological notions of individuals’
(social) identities (Balmer, 2008; Balmer and Liao, 2007; Cornelissen et al., 2007, He and
Balmer, 2007a, b; He and Mukherjee, 2009; Simoes et al., 2005), we base our hypotheses
especially on the theoretical notion of (social) identification. Indeed, we theorise that