Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Leveraging customers’ multiple identities: identity synergy as a driver of organizational identification

Leveraging customers’ multiple identities: identity synergy as a driver of organizational... Marketers want to encourage constituents to strongly identify with their organizations, because organizational identification contributes to positive firm outcomes. However, the extant research on organizational identity largely has overlooked the fact that an individual’s “self” actually is a collection of multiple social identities. This study is the first to propose and empirically demonstrate that marketers can leverage customers’ multiple societal roles (e.g., parent, environmentalist, professor) to build and reinforce their relationships with the firm. Specifically, the research introduces the concept of “identity synergy.” Identity synergy occurs when individuals’ involvement with an organization facilitates their pursuit of other important social identities. Our study shows that customer perception of identity synergy is positively related to identification with an organization. Moreover, the study helps explain the process by which antecedents of organizational identity (identity affirmation, identity support, and value congruence) positively affect customer-firm relationships by proposing and testing identity synergy as a mediator between these antecedents and organizational identification. The study also contributes to our understanding of organizational identity theory by introducing the new concept of peer identification, or identification with other members of the organization, such as other customers or volunteers. The empirical evidence demonstrates identity synergy’s role in building peer identification, as well as peer identification’s role in building organizational identification. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science Springer Journals

Leveraging customers’ multiple identities: identity synergy as a driver of organizational identification

Download PDF
18 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/leveraging-customers-multiple-identities-identity-synergy-as-a-driver-DVDZVVl4zt

References (87)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by Academy of Marketing Science
Subject
Business and Management; Business and Management, general; Marketing; Social Sciences, general
ISSN
0092-0703
eISSN
1552-7824
DOI
10.1007/s11747-011-0254-5
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Marketers want to encourage constituents to strongly identify with their organizations, because organizational identification contributes to positive firm outcomes. However, the extant research on organizational identity largely has overlooked the fact that an individual’s “self” actually is a collection of multiple social identities. This study is the first to propose and empirically demonstrate that marketers can leverage customers’ multiple societal roles (e.g., parent, environmentalist, professor) to build and reinforce their relationships with the firm. Specifically, the research introduces the concept of “identity synergy.” Identity synergy occurs when individuals’ involvement with an organization facilitates their pursuit of other important social identities. Our study shows that customer perception of identity synergy is positively related to identification with an organization. Moreover, the study helps explain the process by which antecedents of organizational identity (identity affirmation, identity support, and value congruence) positively affect customer-firm relationships by proposing and testing identity synergy as a mediator between these antecedents and organizational identification. The study also contributes to our understanding of organizational identity theory by introducing the new concept of peer identification, or identification with other members of the organization, such as other customers or volunteers. The empirical evidence demonstrates identity synergy’s role in building peer identification, as well as peer identification’s role in building organizational identification.

Journal

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science – Springer Journals

Published: May 4, 2011

There are no references for this article.