Organizational values expressed in the websites and its relation with corporate branding and social desirability

2 ABSTRACT During the last years companies are increasing the use of the corporate website on internet to show to the society information about themselves. About the corporate information they show, it’s usually described the values of their corporate culture. By this study is purposed to analyze the values that companies, operating in the Spanish market, publish in their websites. It’s done in two different sectors: hotels and food business. It’s questioned if the corporate values published are related to social desirability in an intention of the companies to align them with the social desired values, using their published corporate values as a marketing strategy related to build a positive corporate branding. It’s analyzed the website of thirty-one and thirty two companies in hotels and food business respectively to extract their published values. By other hand it’s analyzed the social desirability of the Spanish society about which values are considered desirable for the companies in any sector, in tourism and in mass consumption sector. It’s been found a match between the more desirable values in companies of the tourism sector with the values more frequently published in hotels. It hasn’t been found a statistical significant difference of values depending on the sector, but some possible reasons are described. This research has some important practical contributions and opens new lines to continue researching in this field. INTRODUCTION Internet is a global communication tool that allows companies to show to the society many aspects of themselves. During the last years it’s increasing the use of the website to inform the society about the corporate culture, and the values that it is composed. It could be supposed that the values declared in the corporate website is a truthful information that companies show to the society, but it’s needed to question if it’s really to inform the main objective, or it’s hidden other strategic intentions of marketing related to build a positive feeling to the consumer about its corporate branding. It’s possible that the strategy of the enterprises is to make consumers feel an alignment with the values desired by the society with the values published in their website, about their supposed corporate values of their culture.