Crossing the chasm between green corporate image and green corporate identity: a text mining, social media-based case study on automakers

Abstract

As people become more aware of environmental problems, companies experience considerable pressure from customers to go green. Such a pressure has consequently driven companies to project environmental friendliness as an important part of their identity and create a green image of themselves in customers' minds. From this situation arises the issue of separation between the identity that companies want to convey to the public and the image perceived by public. To address this issue, this study analyzes the world 10 top automakers in 2018 regarding their greenness. The tweets posted from the official Twitter accounts of the study companies and those users' tweets posted about them are subjected to text mining. The results for 70% of companies show that there is a significant gap between their claims about their own green identity and how the public perceives such an image. Co-occurrence analysis of words contained in the tweets clarify that the company's approach to address green issues always differs from that of an individual.Finally, this study demonstrated an innovative application of the most commonly used text mining techniques to compare company and consumer perceptions. The findings can also serve as a basis for creating a dictionary of green issues.

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