Fashion Marketing: Contemporary Issues, Second edition - Pr School

234 Fashion Marketing
Based on Hatch and Schultz’s model, the concept of vision, culture and
image indicate that there are gaps between these interfaces, which can be
termed as the vision–culture gap, the image–culture gap, and the vision–image
gap. Amongst these three interfaces, vision–culture gap (desired identity and
actual identity gap) has attracted the most attention while the vision–image
gap (desired identity and perceived identity gap) has been neglected. For
example, in Kiriakidou and Millward’s (2000) study, they examine the ‘degree
of fit’ between the desired and actual identity based on employees’ perceptions.
However, despite an increasing number of studies in this area, there
is still a paucity of empirical research which explores the desired – vis-à-vis
perceived identity gap. Therefore, the focus is to identify the gap between the
desired identity and perceived identity. More specifically, we investigate the
gap between the corporate and management visions of the organization, which
are often decided by the top management team (desired identity) and customers’
perceptions towards the organization’s identity (perceived identity).
Corporate identity constructs
The extant literature has considered a number of dimensions of corporate
identity as presented in Figure 12.1. Schmidt (1995) proposes five main constructs
of corporate identity, including corporate culture, corporate behaviour,
products and services, communications and designs and market conditions
and strategies; van Riel and Balmer (1997) suggest that the way for organizations
to obtain favourable corporate reputation and better organizational and
financial performance is to use corporate identity mix which consists of behaviour,
communication and symbolism (Stuart, 1999). Balmer and Soenen (1999)
introduce a novel corporate identity mix as being composed of the soul, mind
and voice. Melewar and Saunders (2000) propound that Balmer and Soenen’s
corporate identity mix should also include the body of the organization, such
as the location, building and the nationality of the corporation. The above
studies suggest that although various authors identify and categorize the
identity constructs and components in different ways, their views harmonize
with each other. Although there are different notions on the terminology
and elements of the corporate identity constructs, they should not be regarded
as stand-alone constructs; they should be viewed from a holistic perspective,
as integrated mixes of corporate identity. Our approach here mainly adopts
Schmidt’s (1995) corporate identity constructs as they largely coincide with
and overlap with other authors’ constructs, as seen in Figure 12.1.
Corporate culture
Some authors may argue that corporate culture is notably the most import-ant
element of corporate identity formation (Baker and Balmer, 1997) and the corporate
culture should reflect organization’s missions and ethos. In order to have
a successful corporate brand, an organization should understand its corporate