Internal and External Views of the Corporate Reputation in the Japanese Hotel Industry

Brand Personality is one way to evaluate the reputation of a business, by assessing how and in what way brand is recognized both internally and externally. Here "identity" is defined as what the employees think of the business and "image" is what the customers think of the business. In many Reputation models identity and image are thought of as being linked together and mutually dependent. If there is a causal link then the perception of customer facing employees may influence that of customers. In this study the perceptions of customers and employees in a number of ‘hot spring’ hotels in Japan are assessed using a brand personality scale. Identity and image are found to correlate, confirming previous studies in different cultures and suggesting ways in which reputation can be influenced.