ESSENCE AND FEATURES OF CORPORATE REPUTATION ASSESSMENT IN MODERN CONDITIONS

The question of corporate reputation has been raised for many years in various disciplines. Most of these studies consider corporate reputation as a strategic asset, and argue that it leads to sustainable competition through increased financial performance. The article examines the peculiarities of corporate reputation research, which collectively distinguish this direction from other fields of knowledge. The understanding of the essence of the concept of «reputation» by foreign and domestic researchers is presented, the interpretation of which confirms the importance of corporate reputation in the conditions of the information economy and its significant impact on the prospect of its development. It is shown that the main factors influencing the formation of corporate reputation are seven key elements — know-how and experience; emotional connections; management, vision and desire; quality: financial reliability; social trust; environmental reliability. It was concluded that the corporate reputation is the most important factor in the formation of the corporation's value. Factors affecting the formation of corporate reputation are shown: information from the organization; audit data; investment analysis; journalistic ideas; rumors; brand activity (customer image, community image, investor image, employee image). The essence and features of three main concepts of corporate reputation measurement are analyzed: the concept of social expectations, the concept of corporate personality, and the concept of trust. The main widespread models for measuring corporate reputation are considered — the RQ and RepTrak corporate reputation coefficient determination model of the Reputation Institute and Harris Interactive companies, the general reputation assessment model (ORS), Dowling's corporate reputation model, etc. The theoretical and practical significance of the research is determined by the fact that it contains requirements for unifying approaches and tools that would be relevant for different areas of research and that could be compared with business results and metrics, as well as requirements for reputation metrics.