*2.2. Corporate Brand Identity*

The past few years have witnessed a burgeoning interest—among both practitioners and academics—in consumers' "love" for brands (Batra and Bagozzi 2012). Brands are frequently represented in the minds of consumers as a set of humanlike characteristics (van der Lans et al. 2014). In this context, recognized higher education institutions tend to evoke feelings and emotions like "love" in students and prospective students. Most of the recognized faculties in the country in which this research was conducted behave like corporate brands by demonstrating specific characteristics that distinguish them from their peers. Legally, they are part of a university that aggregates them, but brand images of faculties are so strong and distinctive from one another that they can be considered as corporate brands. According to Muniz and O'Guinn (2001) there are brand communities of faculties. These authors define a community as a core construct in social thought and a brand community is a specialized, nongeographically-bound community, based on a structured set of social relations among admirers. We readily become aware of these faculty brand communities when students choose one in which to study after finishing high school. Balmer et al. (2010) used business schools as a model to investigate corporate brand management and identification. In addition, according to Han et al. (2018), the establishment of good interpersonal relationships among community members will enable members to have a sense of belonging and social identity, thereby enhancing customer satisfaction within the community.

Kapferer (1986, 2008) refers to the prism of brand identity as consisting of an internal partbrand "culture," "personality," and "self-image", as well as an external part—"physical dimension," "relation," and "reflected consumer." He considers the external part of the identity prism highly important, especially in the case of corporate brands, since it is exposed to constant interactions with the public. "Reflected consumer" is an external and intangible dimension which reflects the way the consumer wishes to be regarded for "using" a certain brand (Kapferer 1986, 2008). This dimension is characterized by the following features: being better prepared for the labor market; being more capable of creating/innovating as successful professionals; and professionals with high credibility. The relation dimension has tangible and intangible aspects. It defines the behavior that identifies the brand and the way it interacts with its consumers (Kapferer 1986, 2008). It is characterized by the following: friendliness, respect, trust, motherly and close. Finally, the "physical" dimension of brand identity is defined by Kapferer (2008), as an exterior dimension that communicates the physical traits, colors, forms, and qualities of the brand. This dimension has features such as: the physical traits of the university/institution; modernity, sophistication, functional, and adequate.
