Citizen-Based Brand Equity: A Model and Experimental Evaluation

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Teodoro, Manuel P.; An, Seung-Ho
• 署名单位: Texas A&M University System; Texas A&M University College Station; Texas Tech University System; Texas Tech University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION RESEARCH AND THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1053-1858
• DOI: 10.1093/jopart/mux044
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 321-338
• 关键词: service employment relations; behavioral economics; reputation; POLICY; trust; governance; strategy; CUSTOMER; CHOICE; IMPACT

摘要

Government agencies carry reputations in the public imagination. Agency names, images, and icons help form a brand that conveys information about that agency's competency in a given area of public policy. This article brings the concept of consumer-based brand equity from business marketing to public administration research on agency reputation. Like their commercial counterparts, public organizations may enjoy positive brand equity that provides political leverage and facilitates effective management, or negative brand equity that weakens an agency politically and frustrates administration. Just as different commercial products appeal to different kinds of consumers, an agency's brand value might differ with various segments of the public. We adapt a classic model of consumer branding to the public administration context, developing a framework for analyzing citizen-based brand equity for public agencies. A series of experiments embedded in a national survey is then used to gauge brand favorability for four US federal agencies as first-order test of the concept. We find consistent evidence that agencies' brands positively affect support for federal management, but also that partisanship conditions agencies' brand favorability.