Brand.com

Cómo Internet transforma la gestión de la reputación

Brand.com

How Internet transforms reputation management

Pedro MIR

pmir@unav.es Profesor de Marketing I y II, Applied Marketing y Service Marketing

Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales. Universidad de Navarra. 31008 Pamplona

Reyes CALDERÓN rcalderon@unav.es

Profesora de Gobierno de las Organizaciones Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales. Universidad de Navarra. 31008 Pamplona

Mónica RECALDE mrecaldev@unav.es

Profesora de Recursos Humanos y Business Communication Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales. Universidad de Navarra. 31008 Pamplona

Resumen: La vitalidad de Internet subraya la importancia que están adquiriendo los estudios de reputación on line. Algunos de ellos sugieren que ésta puede ser gestionada (Online Reputation Management, ORM). Sin embargo, el creciente poder de los consumidores hace que esta gestión quede, en ocasiones, relegada a un conjunto de herramientas que no siempre se administran de una manera integrada. Este trabajo aborda esta cuestión gracias a una revisión de la literatura con el objetivo de destacar los temas emergentes sobre el campo y de identificar áreas de investigación de interés.

Abstract: The vitality of Internet underlines the research relevance that online reputation studies are acquiring. Most available research suggests that the online reputation might also be a tool to manage (Online Reputation Management, ORM). However, technology development has given consumers a digital fingerprint and impact on a brand reputation. Therefore, brand reputation management is eventually limited to some tools. A literature review was conducted to pay attention to the most important emerging research topics about the field and to identify interesting research areas.

Palabras clave: reputación, on-line, consumidor, marca, marketing, redes sociales

Keywords: reputation, on-line, social media, brand, marketing, management

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1. Introduction

At present Internet has changed the way the members of our society interact with each other. The amount of tools and applications available for interaction can be overwhelming, from email, blogs, instant messaging to online opinion platforms or social network sites and almost everything and everyone can be found online with low effort in engine searchers.

What does this all mean to brands and consumers? On one hand, brands have a new wide channel to communicate with consumers but consumers do not put risk their reputation when talking about a brand. Consumer behavior have changed using Internet to share what they like or dislike of a brand with explicit details of comments and spread to the virtual world. This new consumer behavior and tools represent a challenge for brand’s online reputation management. The development and maintenance of brand reputation on the web is at the heart of companies’ marketing plans, especially in the face of highly competitive markets with increasing unpredictability and decreasing product differentiation.

To understand the new role of consumer in the building reputation process, it is important to know the characteristics of the new consumer that brands are facing at present. Some top marketing websites started calling Generation C (“C” from connected) to describe the consumers who were born in a world where everything is built around digital technologies. The site did not pretend to situate consumers on a specific date; it was determined by their behaviors. Briefly it can be described as the content creation generation, additionally comes the 5 Cs (creativity, casual, collapse, control, celebrity and content). Members of the generation C use creativity to generate new content. Creativity has also lead to what is known as casual collapse, this new generation is breaking the formalities imposed by previous generations concerning beliefs and attitudes towards family life, work, etc. Besides being creative, Generation C is characterized because they need to take control of everything that is going on around, that is why brands decided to customize anything for consumers (Hardey 2011)

In this new context, what does exactly mean to be empowered as a consumer? According to previous research, brands were empowering consumers using a mass customization strategy, which is offering costumers the possibility of configuring the products according to their tastes. Additionally consumers were also allowed to exchange concerns with the brands through their websites. Basically consumers were empowered by a brand that was looking to reduce costs and risk when creating new products or selling existing products. (Fuchs, Prandelli et al. 2010).

2. What is online reputation?

Reputation has certainly no easy definition. Scholars do not agree on a single definition. (Gotsi and Wilson, 2001; Barnett et al., 2002; Balmer, 1998; Rindova et al., 2005). Some authors, such as Balmer (1998), go even to the extent of giving multiple definitions of the concept depending on the point of view being considered. Thus, according to him and from the accountancy perspective, reputation would be an intangible asset that has its own financial

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value; whereas from the strategic point of view, reputation would be a collection of assets and entry barriers into an industry or market; and so on.

Academics argue that reputation is a necessary condition for survival and profitability (Jackson, 2004; Preston, 2004); whereas others think that it helps stakeholders, consumers among them, reduce uncertainty when it comes to evaluating products and services, specially when it is difficult to assess their quality without having previously tried them or require some kind of specialized expertise to evaluate them (Weiwei, 2007; Souiden et al., 2006; Brown and Dacin, 1997). According to Fombrun and Shanley (1990), reputation represents the public’s aggregate judgments over time. Research has also shown that the main features of reputation are perception, time and expectations, judgments, and admiration and credibility from the public (Siano et al., 2011).

Summing up, most of the authors agree that reputation is constructed over time base not only on past events, but also on expectations from stakeholders (Hatch and Schultz, 2008; de Bussy et al., 2000). Therefore it’s even harder to define what is online brand reputation. Chun and Davies (2000) take a first approach by saying that e-reputation is the element of reputation that is derived from online contacts. Following Siano et al. (2011) the literature on e-marketing contains little in the way of conceptual studies or empirical findings on online brand reputation (Bunting and Lipski, 2000; Argyriou et al., 2006; Bolton et al., 2004).

The lack of consensus in the definition on online brand reputation makes it difficult to delimitate its main characteristics and in what differs from off-line reputation. A first approximation would be the analysis of the reputation building process presented by Siano (2011). This process was introduced to explain how brand reputation was built and it has three stages: shaping, refraction and assessment. On the first stage brands will use different strategies to reach different audiences (i.e. investors, consumers, stakeholders) to form a relationship and transmit its values. Due to the interaction between brands and stakeholders, on the second stage all the audiences will respond to the brand with opinions and comments over its performance and behavior. At the end, people will combine the image shown by the company with the opinion from all stakeholders and form a view of the brand’s reputation. Relating the process described with brand online reputation means to state the fact that it will remain the same with an specialty, which is the time needed.

3. Online management and some tools

The online context offers consumers and brands the possibility of a faster and real-time interaction. At present main companies measure their on-line reputation through what has been called the media noise which means the positive, neutral or negative comments that consumers and stakeholders put on the internet. These comments have a difficult challenge to be measured because although there are complex technological tools with semantic algorithms there must be always a human management behind because artificial intelligence is not developed yet enough to identify and understand completely human interaction in the internet. This effect boosted the raise of the brand on-line expert also named community managers.

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These still influence firm performances at different levels but their formation and consolidation is not any longer under the exclusive control of marketing departments, corporate communications and professional news media. Therefore, brand reputation management is eventually limited to some tools such as social media, online opinion platforms, bloggers as influencers, antibranding websites and the eWon concept. It allows assessing and managing some elements of online reputation, identifying opportunities for improvement and proposing measures to enhance the recognition of the key aspects of the company by internet users.

3.1. Social Media

Boyd and Ellison (2008) define social media as “web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system” (p. 211). The investigation will later provide a more precise definition of social media. The main benefit is that it has given consumers a “voice”. Brands no longer control the total amount of information there is about them online, technology has allowed consumers to give opinions and share information at low cost or even free to a wide audience where everyone can have a word (Siano, 2010).

Consumer empowerment is a direct consequence of the development of social media because consumers have a new voice though the internet and have a new tool to spread their opinions that are the social media. From 2007 and on, research has found an increase in the participation of Internet surfers on social media. This participation includes joining a new social network, reading blogs or posting reviews on online opinion platforms (i.e. websites where consumers are allowed to write opinions about products or services and also rate them). There are two main concepts surrounding social media: web 2.0 and User Generated Content.

According to Cooke and Buckley (2007) web 2.0 is a second-generation of web-based services, for example, social networking sites, that lay emphasis on collaboration and sharing among its users (e.g. communities for professionals to share the expertise and search for business or job opportunities). It turns the web into a platform where everyone is able to collaborate and give out information (Hardey, 2011; Qualman, 2009). According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, User Generated Content (UGC) is content publicly available on a website or social network site, that shows some level of creativity and was created outside professional practices. (Vickery, Wunsch-Vincent 2007) Employing these two concepts Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) define social media as the collection of Internet based applications build as web 2.0 that allow the exchange of UGC.

Social media will have an impact on brand reputation since it allows consumers to share opinions on products and services with other consumers; also lets brands and consumers interact. All these interactions have an impact that is why statistics show that 77% of consumer read and follows Brands’ Facebook page posts and 56% are willing to recommend the brand after becoming fan on their Facebook page. These percentages show to some level the impact that social media can have in the relationship between consumers and brands,

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particularly when keeping a reputation. The following table shows an example according to the rank among the F500.

Table 1. 2011-2012 Fortune 500 Companies with Corporate Facebook and Followers

If we look at the Facebook Pages by Rank among the F500 follow the same pattern of adoption by rank as Twitter. Forty-two percent of the top 200 have a corporate Facebook page while 40% of the bottom 200 use this tool. Rank clearly impacts blogging more than it does either Twitter or Facebook. The other variable could be the Corporate Facebook Fans where Coca-Cola dominates for the second year with 42,226,297 fans. Walt Disney followed with 32,027,185 fans. Yahoo was not listed among the F500 last year. Walt Disney's and Intel's Facebook fans have more than quadrupled, while Yahoo's and Google's Facebook fans have more than doubled.

Some approach to social media measure is suggested by Murdogh (2009) that suggests a map of measurement to project or business goals. Second, identifies specific key performance indicators (KPI’s) to align objectives and finally establishes performance benchmarks or targets to gauge success. The important factor is to focus on just a few metrics for each objective so that program evaluation remains simple and one does not end up with “analysis paralisis”. In this study is remarked the importance of measuring both qualitative indicators such as discussion topics or sentiment and quantitative measures like counts of reach, chatter mentions and site engagement events. The following figure 1 specifies goals, objectives and metrics.

Corporation F500Rank 2012 Facebook Fans 2011 Facebook Fans % Change

Coca-Cola 59 42,226,297 32,303,342 ↑ 31%

Walt Disney 66 32,027,185 7,065,639 ↑ 353%

Starbucks 227 30,427,600 24,102,790 ↑ 26%

McDonald’s 107 20,560,759 9,426,335 ↑ 118%

Wal-Mart 2 15,770,884 7,105,159 ↑ 122%

Target 38 12,641,972 4,919,647 ↑ 157%

Intel 51 10,428,375 2,319,637 ↑ 350%

Google 73 9,718,582 3,576,442 ↑ 172%

Yahoo 483 9,550,245 4,645,713 ↑ 106%

Nike 136 9,250,588 4,757,335 ↑ 94%

Kohl's 146 6,464,081 5,290,702 ↑ 22%

Source: Fortune 500

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Figure 1. Measurement social media

Source: Murdough (2009)

3.2. Opinion platforms

Given the proliferation of numerous online review website it is common for firms to receive both positive and negative reviews. Among the social media, we find the online opinion platforms that are special websites where consumers are able to write comments, opinions for other consumers about brands and products they used. One of the main benefits is that consumers are not required to have higher level of internet related expertise (Khammash and Griffiths, 2010). Tripadvisor, Ciao and Yelp are examples of these sites and specially in services, hospitality and fast moving consumer goods this sites are gaining relevance and a direct impact on consumers decision process before acquiring a product or a service to reduce their risk of failure.

The answer to the success of this platforms is that consumers prime motivation to post online reviews are the desire of social interactions, possible economic incentives (from other companies or competitors that pay consumers to put negative opinions), concern for others consumers and potential to enrich self-worth because they consider they have the authority and knowledge to act as opinion leaders. (Amblee and Bui 2008). Consumers also prefer peer recommendations meaning recommendation from people who that consider them to be equal to, since the websites where they post or read a comment or an opinion of a brand or product are formed by consumers with same interests, similar profiles and even socio demographic status. Therefore, the opinions founded are perceived to be relevant and unbiased and they will actually be willing to believe in these opinions more than in common advertisements from brands and products (Senecal and Nantel, 2004; Smith, 2007). On this basis, commercial sites like www.amazon.com are encouraging the consumers to post reviews (O'CONNOR 2010). Other authors (Khammash and Havard Griffiths 2010) found thirteen new motives and reasons for reading reviews additionally to the eight already existing on a studio performed one of the top two worldwide consumer opinion platforms ww.ciao.com. The original motives were divided in four categories: decision involvement

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(e.g. risk reduction), product involvement (e.g. learning how a product should be consumed), social involvement (e.g. belonging to a virtual community) and finally economic involvement. On the new thirteen motives the investigation found three new categories that are self-involvement (e.g. curiosity and broadening of horizons), consumer empowerment (e.g. trusted opinion, non-expert opinion and unique experiences) and site administration (examining review accuracy and availability), additionally there were new social involvement motives. (e.g. understanding people).

Summing up consumers are looking for unique customer experiences, they want to reduce risk and cognitive dissonance (i.e. “when a consumer makes a decision to purchase an item and, shortly after, experiences guilt over the choice, wondering if the other equally appealing item might have brought greater satisfaction.” (Lister )), and they want to learn about new products, or understand if their experience with a brand or product is the same as other users, usually in those products that require higher involvement, they are trying to reduce the searching time and there is a pleasurable process because of the fact that they also find reviews enjoyable and have fun while checking them.

However, some researchers have certain doubts about the credibility of the information shared on these platforms because is almost impossible to check if the people giving opinions are real users or fake profiles paid by companies to impact on competitors brand reputations. O’Connor (2010) considers that it is important to keep an eye on the amount of information there is online since it can have positive outcomes but it can also bring confusion among consumers. By Hardey (2011), the creation of false information in reviews is not part of the nature of the people from the Generation C like if there would be an unwritten code of honesty when giving opinions. On that same research, in a focus group discussion people revealed similar expectations about the authenticity of the content of the opinion about the quality or reputation of brands and products.

Additionally surveys reach a general consensus about how to identify fake reviews, understanding fake reviews as opinions where there is a company behind to influence or a specific interest instead of a real customer opinion, for instance the fact that the person who posted it, has only posted once is usually a clear signal of fake post that tries to compensate some negative evaluation. The analysis finally reveals the interconnection between consumer-authored information and a rise of trust in consumer generated content.

Apparently if consumers trust the information generated on online opinion platforms, how does positive or negative reviews affect online brand reputation? Although is not controllable by companies there is no evidence that firms are taking action in these websites letting customers criticize or impacting on their reputation. On an empirical study Bambauer-Sachse and Mangold (2010) analyze the effect of negative online reviews over brand equity dilution understood brand equity as the summary of the reputation in the consumer’s mind. The variable used was the consumer-based brand equity that is the consumers’ perception of a product’s additional value that is created by the brand name and discussed above this article. So we can assume an influence over reputation. As a matter of fact the findings show that the negative online product reviews have harmful effects on consumer-based brand equity. This

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will lead to a dilution of brand equity. Another important finding was the fact that it affects all kinds of brands.

3.3. Blogger as influencers

As previously stated blogs were the beginning of social media, the Organization for Economic and Cooperation Development defines them as special types of websites that display chronologically reversed entries (Wunsch-Vincent 2007). They take different media formats and the content can vary from personal diary to critics about brands. Consumers and companies use Blogs. Consumer does it either to promote brand tribalism (Veloutsou, 2009) or the opposite to create a bad brand reputation sites.

Research has also shown an increase in the power of consumer through blogs, which explains the fact that by 2012, there were 42 million blogs and 329 million people reading blogs (Blogging.org, 2013). Additionally academic literature shows that users find blogging as a good way to express opinions and actually trust other blogger opinions so it seems that is a crucial tool to build brand reputation. In fact, consumers read blogs before acquiring certain products (Kerr, 2009). Moreover, some companies encourage their workers to be active bloggers to promote the culture of the company (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011). The   graph  below  shows  the  increasing  number  of  corporate  blogs  in  Fortune  500  companies.  

Figure 2. Fortune 500 companies with corporate blogs

Source: Fortune 500

Not only blogger but also Twitter as influencer for corporate reputation. Rank appears to be less of an influence for the use of Twitter by the F500 than for the use of blogging. All the top 10 companies have corporate Twitter accounts. Forty-four percent of the Twitter accounts belong to the companies in the top 200 on the list, while 37% come from those ranked in the bottom 200. Those ranked higher in the 2012 F500 are only slightly more likely to adopt Twitter than their lower ranked counterparts.

 

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Table 2. 2011-2012 F500 Twitter rank

Google has the highest number of followers on Twitter among the 2012 F500, followed by Whole Foods Market, Starbucks, and Southwest Airlines. Walt Disney had the largest increase in a year with 206,843 Twitter followers in 2011 to 1,289,222 followers in 2012 (84%).

3.4. Anti-branding websites

Beside blogs, consumers have one more online tool available to influence a brand e-reputation. Known as anti-branding websites, can be described as the opposite of the corporate website. The objective of these websites is not only to complaint about a certain product or service like reviews in online opinion platforms. It goes beyond, consumers use them to criticize in some cases the whole corporation policies concerning values, environmental and health issues. In fact consumers are using “domain names” to attract more attention (e.g. Coca Cola’s Killercoke.org). Moreover anti branding sites can be considered a movement against brand like globalization.

Research shows that brand value is affected by the existence of anti-brand sites either positively or negatively. Also it has found three patterns of communication in these sites: market, ideological and transactional. The first and more popular one use market related expertise to criticize brands, and is the one that has more influence over brand value. Most of the authors also agreed with the fact that strong brands were the target for anti-branding websites. (Kucuk, 2008).

Corporation F500Rank 2012 Twitter followers 2011 Twitter followers % Change

Google 73 4,795.987 3,328.282 ↑ 44%

Whole Foods Market 264 2,266.439 1,992,873 ↑ 34%

Starbucks 227 2,546.244 1,580,033 ↑ 61%

Southwest Airlines 167 1,305.938 1,153.279 ↑ 13%

Walt Disney 66 1,289.229 206,243 ↑ 523%

Verizon Communications 15 743.408 231,304 ↑ 221%

Coca cola 59 547.343 344,461 ↑ 58%

McDonald’s 107 512.923 153.201 ↑ 235%

Wynn Resorts 462 448.220 n/a n/a

American Express 95 442.983 155,931 ↑ 184%

Nike 136 427,406 119.841 ↑ 247

Source: Fortune 500

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3.5. From 'Word of Mouth to Word of Mouse': eWom concept

The influence of the word of mouth is increasing even with today’s advanced Internet environment. Although previous studies indicate no consensus on the impact on product sales (Chevalier 2006) some products with controversial reviews by consumers could arouse a huge amount of discussions among consumers that eventually translates in product sales.

On the one hand, recents researches (Shao 21012) concludes that manufacturers do not need to eliminate the spread of negative WOM but should aim to keep it in a moderate level. On the other hand, some authors analyzed sales of products through internet in Amazon in relation with the reviews of the consumers and conclude the opposite that is that the customer word of mouth affects consumer purchase behavior. Although consumers need to express their opinions whether they are satisfied or unsatisfied with a service or product there are also several important ethical issues such as the consumer’s decisions to participate in online communities is done without the consideration that firms maybe observing these conversations and draw some inferences from them (Godes and Mayzlin, 2004).

Consumers need to express their opinions whether they are satisfied or unsatisfied with a service. That is how the concept of word of mouth was born. There is all kind of research about the influence of ‘word of mouth’ (WOM) on consumer behavior. Most if not all have agreed on the important role, WOM has on the consumer’s’ perception, beliefs and attitudes towards any brand. Social media has taken WOM and turn it into eWOM understood as electronic word of mouth (eWOM) is a positive or negative testimony made by a consumer about a product or brand that is available to a wide audience using the Internet. It can be done through online reviews or ratings. A review is a free format text in which the consumer will describe the brand evaluated. On the other hand the rating is a numerical range score that will also evaluate the brand. The importance of eWOM lays on the fact that it’s disconnected from time and space, due to its low costs of storage and posting, so it becomes permanent on the site. Like leaving a fingerprint to which consumers can always go back and maintain a prejudice about a brand. (Amblee and Bui, 2008).

On a survey performed by Opinion Research Corporation (2008) was found that over 60% of the respondents checked online reviews, blogs and others types of eWOM, and over 80% admitted that it had some degree of influence on their purchase decision but this is not directly proven that had a direct effect on the reputation because of the different decisions that build a consumer purchase process. Likewise the Pew Internet and American Life Project (2005) reckons that at least half of all US internet users have created content online or published their opinions. In Europe, similarly, Forrester Research (2007) reports that almost 60% of online consumers are also actively participating in blogs, consumer review and social networking sites (O’Connor, 2010).

Is evident that consumers take action in media activities and communities that are neither paid for nor induced by brand owners are claimed to have a potentially game-changing impact on communication and brand building. Some authors like Corstjens and Umblijs (2012) suggested a method to assess the impact of this type of social media activities on the actual performance of brands in the market which would include brand equity thus brand reputation.

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Corstjens and Unmlijs develop a four-step process to condense the complex reality of micro-social-media events for a brand into a manageable set of social media indicators what they call (SMI). These SMI subsequently are used as a subset of the drivers, together with more traditional marketing-mix elements-in a general market-response model-to estimate their relative impact on brand performance in the market but there is nothing specified about brand reputation.

The main conclusions of their research showed that is that there is no methodology to research in social media to link intensity of the brand noise or reputation and the brand performance in the market. Another conclusion of their study is that the effect of social media on brand sales depends on the type of product category and the competitive landscape of the industry There is also a challenge to assess with accuracy the reach of each message in social media because few existing social-media listening engines have appropriate linguistic algorithms to divide social-media messages correctly into positive, neutral, and negative. The large number of messages that need to be classified means that manual filtering can be time consuming and expensive.

Finally, another important issue to be addressed is that consumers who identify more strongly with a brand or company show greater positive WOM but brands and companies need to cultivate a satisfactory relationship with their consumers (Hong and Yang 2009).

4. Conclusions

The nascent of social space is rapidly expanding and it’s a experimentation time for marketers. After analyzing how consumers are using internet to influence brand e-reputation the next step would be to check what are the brands doing?

Some authors states that companies on the one hand are offering coupons or free services after receiving a complain and on the other hand social media gives them the possibility to obtained positive reviews using the same methods. An interesting fact is the importance to reward brand fanatics, as done by some firms who have given discounts to customers who have left social media footprint. With this practice a new topic to be discussed in further researchers could be the non-objective opinion on brand’s reputation guided by the compensation of the brand or company. Academic literature argues the fact that companies are only using social media to transmit new messages instead of working on how to integrate this valuable info from consumers into the business processes. Finally, Birkner (2011) emphasizes on the fact that brands cannot ignore what is going on online, they will have to choose between being active or not. Another authors remark the fact that companies not necessarily have to take online reviews or anti-branding sites as negatives but they need to find a way in which they can use the valuable information transmitted by consumers in those sites (Corstjens and Umblijs, 2012; Kucuk, 2007; Cooke and Buckley, 2007).

Brands have taken different approaches when dealing with online reputation. Some companies have hire the services from online reputation management firms who are constantly checking what surfers are saying about a brand, product or person online using technology or sophisticated engines and algorithms combined with personal observation like

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what are called community managers. Given the proliferation of numerous online-review websites it is common for firms to receive both positive and negative reviews. Typically Online Reputation Management offer services such as: creation of online profiles, manage reviews online, brand mentioning, monitoring and insight, responding to complaints. A brands benefit from these services is the control of the online search results and the challenge is how to measure this impact on brand’s reputation, which is not directly linked with reputation.

Most if not all the brands have decided to enter the world of social media by creating an official Facebook and Twitter account. In this social network sites brands have changed their communication methods. Park (2011) offers clear examples on his work of how companies are acting on the social media, with the clear goal of engaging with the consumer. For example Toyota, who after being strongly criticized over Facebook, decided to improve communication with costumers by showing concern over opinions and realizing that nowadays the online market context is consumer driven (Byrd, 2012).

Summing up, brands are being active over the social media trying to control the influence it may have on their e-reputation. However, there is no methodology published during the period of this research to set an on-line reputation protocol for the brand’s eWOM in companies, something that would clarify actions, crisis reactions and save money to companies that would know how to react in front of the media noise in internet.

The final idea of this article reaches the conclusion that reputation follows the same pattern of measurement in general terms both in online and offline world base on two basic indicators, the positive and negative noise. This is translated in too complex measurements of semantic analysis in the online field and media mentions in the offline scenario. There are very few studies that attempt to make a comparison between online and offline reputation analysis but authors different settings may result in different dimensions which means that brand reputation may vary depending on which content operates, offline or online. There is a challenge to measure the brand reputation with online conversations because of the privacy of them and direct observation is still difficult because of the cost in time consuming and the difficulty of reaching all consumers sites, being this the critical point of the measurement because of the dispersion in the Internet.

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Internet and further consumer empowerment have changed the reputation building process. Brands have lost the central role in it. Even though at the beginning brands were struggling to deal with this new context, they are finally getting used to it and obtaining valuable information that can, after all benefit them. There are several worthwhile issues that we leave for further researches. One is the relation between the impact of the online and offline brand reputation and the sales effects among these two worlds would be valuable. Another issue would be the relationship among communication and brand advertising and the effects on online reputation with a quantitative survey. Some limitations have been found in this research like the crucial need of finding a definition of reputation on line in the scientific literature understood in a wide concept to include all forms and types of people interactions in the information and communication technologies.

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