Impression Management Through Websites: An Analysis of the Romanian Banking Industry

Modern corporations invest time and resources to build a favorable image among consumers, using a vast array of communication channels. It is in the interest of companies to manage the impressions and perceptions of individuals in order to create or maintain a strong corporate identity. The present paper aims to identify and analyze the ways in which banks communicate and promote through their official website as an online impression management strategy. To achieve the goal, a descriptive research was conducted, using the content analysis as the research method. A theoretical sampling and a partially guided sampling method based on accessibility (availability) was carried out. The corpus of research was constituted by all the Romanian banks and the sample is represented by those banks that have an official website, resulting 18 cases. The research tool (analysis grid) contains five categories of information, based on the content and structure of the official websites of the selected banks. The study provides an overview of new media communication in the Romanian banking context, as they choose to communicate and promote themselves using the official website to create an online presence. From this point of view, they need to pay special attention to the structure, design and content of their site, because any symbol counts in creating an online reputation. Managers do not have to forget that the reputation in the online environment inevitably influences the offline one, so they should consider the opportunities for managing the impressions on the Internet.