ICT and Corporate Image: The Customer's Perspective

摘要

As new ICT products appear on the market, many managers choose to adopt them without clear evidence of the productivity benefits often claimed by vendors. Some may trust or hope that the promised benefits do eventually materialize, but others may adopt them because of ICT's symbolic meaning. This article investigates the links between ICT, corporate image, and purchase decisions or other forms of support among prospective customers, a previously neglected external stakeholder group. This article presents an experiment testing the links between IT, corporate image, and support behavior among customers. The results show that there is a strong link between conspicuous use of IT artifacts and corporate image leading to support behavior among customers. Social meaning of IT indirectly affects customer support and firm survival. This explains why savvy managers adopt new IT products that are consistent with their desired corporate images without clear evidence of the productivity benefits. Implications for theory, practice and future research are discussed.