Corporate reputation has been studied for over two decades from a variety of academic disciplines, constructs, and definitions. The interest in corporate reputation lies in the many potential benefits that an organization can derive from a good corporate reputation. In spite of the all the research, corporate reputation is not yet fully understood due its complexity and much of the research used to develop corporate reputation theory has excluded the healthcare industry. The healthcare industry has been described by authors as unique from other industries. The problem is that hospital executives must be able to manage reputation but it is not known how consumer-based hospital reputation is formed; without such information hospital executives cannot manage reputation that can potentially lead to reduced patient loyalty, lower market share, declining revenues, and hospital closure. This exploratory, qualitative, single case study examined the formation of consumer-based hospital reputation through the lens of attitude theory; one theory of corporate reputation is that reputation can be thought of as an attitude. Focus groups of patients and potential patients of the case hospital were asked to describe the criteria they used to form their attitudes about the case hospital; attitudes that collectively make up the consumer-based reputation of the hospital. The analysis of the data revealed study participants relied primarily on their own experiences, word-of-mouth, and observation of others' experiences to form their opinions and attitudes about the case hospital. The antecedents found in traditional models of corporate reputation did not reflect the antecedents to consumer-based hospital reputation found in this case study and further research is needed to further explore the phenomena of how consumer-based hospital reputation is formed and develop models for corporate reputation in a healthcare context.
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