A transdisciplinary literature review enabled us to identify a new construct in the marketing research field, i.e. Customer-Company Identification. It is defined as the process whereby customer’s beliefs about a company become self-defining and whereby he defines himself by the same attributes he believes define the other customers of this company. This research aims at developing a measurement scale of the construct and showing its relational consequences, such as knowledge about the company, empathy, relationship investment and attachment.Relations avec la clientèle; Identification; Relationship marketing;

Monnot, Elisa

Reniou, Fanny

Volle, Pierre

English

Research Papers in Economics

 
  1
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Customer-Company Identification:  
A Study of Relational Consequences in the Non-Profit Sector 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Elisa MONNOT 
(1) 
elisamonnot@hotmail.com 
 
 
Fanny RENIOU 
(2) (1) 
freniou@yahoo.fr 
 
 
Pierre VOLLE 
(1) 
pierre.volle@dauphine.fr 
 
 
 
 (1) Centre de recherche DRM UMR CNRS 7088 
Dauphine Marketing Stratégie Prospective (DMSP) 
Université Paris-Dauphine 
Place du Maréchal de Lattre de Tassigny 
75775 Paris Cedex 16 
 
 
 (2) Programme Doctoral ESSEC 
Avenue Bernard Hirsch, B.P. 50105 
95021 Cergy-Pontoise Cedex  
  2
Customer-Company Identification:  
A Study of Relational Consequences in the Non-Profit Sector 
 
« Some  of  the  strongest  consumer-company  relationships  are  based  on  consumer’s 
identification  with  the  companies  that  help  them  satisfy  one  or  more  key  self-definitional 
needs »  (Bhattacharya  &  Sen,  2003).  This  quotation  underlines  the  predominance  of  the 
“consumer-company identification” construct in explaining relationships between consumers 
and companies. Some individuals need to identify themselves with other individuals, groups, 
organizations or even companies in order to express their own identity.  
Considerable  research  has  been  conducted  in  the  area  of  organizational  behaviour  on 
employees’ identification with their organizations (Mael & Ashforth, 1989; Dutton, Dukerich 
& Harquail, 1994; Bergami & Bagozzi, 1996), and in the area of marketing on consumers’ 
identification  with  brands  (Huffman,  Ratneshwar  &  Mick,  2000;  Escalas,  2004),  or  on 
members’ identification with non-profit organizations (Bhattacharya, Rao & Glynn, 1995). 
But  as  far  as  we  know,  few  studies  have  particularly  focused  on  “Customer-Company 
Identification” (CCI)  (Bhattacharya  & Sen, 2003; Ahearne,  Bhattacharya  & Gruen, 2005) 
whereas it is a current phenomenon for different kinds of companies. Identification is defined 
as the degree to which individuals perceive themselves and the focal company as sharing the 
same defining attributes, and as different from the ones who do not belong to this company 
(Pratt, 1998). It can imply blatant consumer behaviours: the desire to know everything about 
the company, a tendency to praise its worth, a wish to tie closer relationships with it, and even 
sometimes a certain pride to show it.  
This research shows that CCI can legitimately describe the relationships between customers 
and companies, and aims at having a better understanding of its main relational consequences.  
The goals of this paper are consistent with the need for an analysis of how companies express 
their  identities  and  the  values  they  stand  for,  but  also  of  how  customers  receive  these 
identities and incorporate them in their self-definition. This phenomenon may concern both 
traditional  companies  and  non-profit  companies  such  as  cities,  political  movements  or 
universities, the specific case we are looking at in this research. The concept of branding has 
its origin in the marketing field, but could be also used to describe how organizations manage 
their identities. That is the reason why we have a pluridisciplinary approach in this paper by 
taking into account both marketing and organizational studies.  
 
In the first section, a literature review on identification enables a clear definition of the CCI 
construct to be given. Then in the second section, the conceptual framework and the main 
hypothesis are exposed. In the third section, an empirical investigation into a non-profit sector 
(i.e. higher education) is presented. Finally, in the last section the results are discussed.  
 
1. Literature Review 
 
Members’ organizational identification – Simon (1947) is one of the first researchers who has 
introduced the concept of identification. According to social identity theory (Tajfel, 1978; 
Turner, 1984) identity is composed of both a personal identity, which consists of idiosyncratic 
characteristics,  aptitudes  and  preferences,  and  a  social  identity,  which  is  linked  to  the 
membership to several social groups. In contrast with the identity notion, identification is 
defined as the degree to which individuals perceive themselves and the focal company as 
sharing the same defining attributes, and as different from the ones who do not belong to this 
company (Pratt, 1998). Therefore, identity is linked to identification because it involves the 
transfer to the individual of characteristics and values attributed to the group. Organizations 
can be important sources of identity construction for individuals (Mael & Ashforth, 1989).  
  3
Individuals identify with an organization when they perceive an overlap between its attributes 
and  their  own  (Dutton,  Dukerich  &  Harquail,  1994).  Thus,  organizational  identification 
affects the organization members, but identification can also concern customers. Few studies 
have looked at CCI in marketing literature; its conceptualization is therefore limited. This 
explains why we refer to the organizational research field in this paper to help us define this 
construct.  
 
Customer-Company Identification (CCI) – In marketing research, some authors tried to have a 
better understanding of the relationships between customers and brands (Fournier, 1998), or 
between  customers  and  companies  inside  brand  communities  (McAlexander,  Schouten  & 
Koenig, 2002). Strong relationships between customers and companies often result from their 
identification with them. Bhattacharya & Sen (2003) were the first authors to look at this 
phenomenon in the marketing field. Their analysis focuses on the consumer who wants to 
have  a  deep  relationship  with  a  company.  According  to  them,  the  strongest  relationships 
between  customers  and  companies  are  grounded  in  the  identification  phenomenon.  It  is 
necessary to specify that CCI and identification with a brand are different concepts. Indeed, 
the latest refers to the degree to which a consumer defines himself by the same attributes that 
he believes define the brand (Escalas, 2004). In this paper, we use Bhattacharya & Sen (2003) 
model  as  our  main  theoretical  framework  and  define  CCI  as  “the  process  whereby  a 
customer’s  beliefs  about  a  company  and  its  values  become  self-defining  and  whereby  he 
defines  himself  by  the  same  attributes  that  he  believes  define  the  other  customers  of  the 
company and by the opposite attributes which define the non-customers”. 
 
2. Conceptual Framework and Hypothesis 
 
In order to delimit our conceptual framework, we define CCI according to the dimensions of 
company  identity  traditionally  identified  in  the  literature  (Hatch  &  Schultz,  1997),  which 
helps us make the link between several notions such as organization, company, brand on the 
one hand, and member and customer, on the other hand. The literature enabled us to identify 
four facets of Consumer-Company Identification: self-definition (SELF), sense of belonging 
(BEL), similarity of values (SIM) and self-valorization (VAL). Moreover, as explained in the 
introduction, one of the paper goals is to identify some consequences of this phenomenon. So, 
concerning the consequences of CCI, although Bhattacharya & Sen (2003) identify five of 
them (consumer loyalty, company promotion, customer recruitment, resilience to negative 
information and stronger claim on company), the literature review leads us to enrich their 
model  and  consider  broader  consequences:  knowledge  about  the  company,  empathy, 
relationship investment and attachment. 
 
Knowledge:  Company  perceived  identity  varies  with  the  degree  of  customer  knowledge 
(Bhattacharya & Sen, 2003). Thus, we propose the hypothesis that company knowledge is not 
only a necessary condition of identification, but also one of its consequences.  
H1: The more (vs. the less) customers identify themselves with the company, the 
more (vs. the less) they know about the company.  
Empathy: Customers who identify themselves with a company are more willing to attribute 
the company successes and failures to their own. This could be similar to empathy, defined as 
an affective identification with a person or an object.  
H2: The more (vs. the less) customers identify themselves with the company, the 
more (vs. the less) they feel empathy towards the company.   
  4
Relationship investment: this is defined as the active customer desire to make great efforts for 
the company (Rokkan, Heide & Wathne, 2003). 
H3: The more (vs. the less) customers identify themselves with the company, the 
more (vs. the less) customers invest in the relationship with the company.  
Attachment:  Some  customers  are  very  affected  if  a  company  with  which  they  identify 
disappears (Bergami & Bagozzi, 1996). As identification leads to the fact that they agree with 
the company values, it could also favour a kind of attachment to it.  
H4: The more (vs. the less) customers identify themselves with the company, the 
more (vs. the less) they feel attached to the company.  
 
3. Empirical Test 
 
3.1. Research field 
 
We decided to study CCI in the original context of higher education for two reasons.  
First, in this case, students have a triple status. Indeed, they are at the same time (1) customers 
(as they have several expectations toward their institutions and sometimes have to pay school 
fees, which put them in a contractual relationship with them), (2) partners (in a coproduction 
logic) and (3) members (as they have been chosen to study in this institution and as they often 
share  a  sense  of  membership).  Students  can  indeed  identify  with  their  university  like 
customers can identify with a company (Armstrong, 2003).  
Second, according to the literature, individuals who identify the most with companies tend to 
consider the ones which have strong values. Thus, we chose to study a specific university 
which is well-known for its strong identity. We took the case of a French university where 
there  is  a  real  community  of  students  sharing  the  university  values.  As  in  this  case  we 
consider students as customers, it is consistent to deal with company identification and not 
only  with  organizational  identification  because  there  are  not  just  inside  members  like 
employees, but also external stakeholders.  
 
3.2. Measurement scale development 
 
Little attention has been paid to operationalizing CCI. There is no unified scale to measure the 
construct. Research studies often resort to a combination of verbal and visual items in order to 
measure the similarity between individual and company identity (Sommerfeld & Paulssen, 
2008; Martenson, 2008). Developing an operationalization of CCI is then necessary to have a 
better understanding of it.  
For the development of our scale, the item generation has been realized, on the one hand on 
the basis of items coming from the literature and adapted to our construct (Mael & Ashforth, 
1989; Vandenberg, Self et Seo, 1994; Bergami & Bagozzi, 1996; Bhattacharya et Sen, 2003), 
and, on the other hand, on the basis of items created especially for this research. Finally 
fifteen items, which gather the different facets of the construct presented earlier, have been 
submitted  to  respondents.  In  order  to  isolate  the  construct  dimensions  and  to  purify  the 
measurement scale, exploratory factorial analyses have been conducted. We obtained a scale 
with two dimensions (a statutory dimension and a community dimension) and seven items 
which are based on the four facets defining the construct.   
  5
3.3. Validation of the scale and hypothesis test 
 
An exploratory analysis was conducted for all the other constructs of the structural model we 
developed. A structural equation modeling was adjusted with all variables. A confirmatory 
validation of the scale was then conducted and it confirms the exploratory one. To test H1 to 
H4, a structural model was tested. It includes both identification dimensions as exogenous 
variables (seven items) and the four consequences mentioned earlier as endogenous variables 
(ten items). The results allow us to confirm all hypothesis but H1 and H3 for the statutory 
dimension. 
 
4. Contributions 
 
Methodological contributions – Our measurement scale can be an answer to the critics found 
in the organizational literature towards previous scales. Indeed, Bergami & Bagozzi (1996) 
have questioned the theoretical meaning of existing scales (Mael & Ashforth, 1989) and the 
fact that little attention has been paid to the cognitive facet of the construct. Our scale brings a 
new vision of CCI construct which could be adapted to a marketing perspective. Indeed, items 
used  could  be  adapted  to  grasp  several  kinds  of  relationships  between  customers  and 
companies.  
 
Theoretical contributions – This research extends previous studies on this topic as it considers 
broader relational consequences of identification. The results show that our model can explain 
a great part of the variance of these consequences. Moreover, this research contributes to a 
shift of perspective as it goes beyond traditional customer considerations towards products 
and brands by explaining a higher level, their relationships with companies.  
 
Managerial contributions – The database shows that individuals are different from each other 
in terms of their tendency to identify with companies. Thus, they are faced with customers 
who have heterogeneous expectations towards them. Determining individuals who strongly 
identify  with  companies  should  allow  them  to  benefit  from  these  allies  who  have  active 
behaviours. 
 
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Customer-Company Identification : a Study of Relational Consequences in the Non-Profit Sector.

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