Introduction

To be unique and distinctive is one of the main and most important assets of an organization (Aaker 1991) and thus is a key strategic goal of firm owners and managers around the globe. In today’s dynamic, international, and crowded markets, the development of strategies that enable a company to stand out of this crowd can generate positive perceptions stakeholders have about an organization (Hatch & Schultz 2003) and thus provide competitive advantages (Abratt & Kleyn 2012). Uniqueness and distinction have an immutable connection to a firm’s identity and the identification of this identity by a firm’s stakeholders (Balmer 2008). By adopting this identity-based perspective, the importance of the visibility as well as the identification of a firm’s identity to its stakeholders becomes evident, and defining efficacious identity signals is getting strategically imperative (Balmer & Greyser 2002). It is no surprise that research and practical interest on identity and identification has grown significantly over the last decades (Brown et al. 2006).