In the last twenty years, brands and company reputation have been rising sharply as one of the most important source of “value creation” for the companies.

Company reputation and brand management, defined as the perceptions of social responsibility and ethical conduct, are by no means a quantitatively dominant value-form in today’s economy.

In recent years, the new communication environment has severely changed the construction of company reputation and ethical capital.

Companies are facing the potential embedded in Social media and Web 2.0 and the growing importance of managing brand and reputational value in the new media environment. Indeed, the new media environment has created a situation where a growing share of value resource is produced in processes that are beyond the direct control of companies, where companies are stakeholders, together with the consumers.

After an introduction on the concepts of brand management and ethical capital, the course provides students an in-depth analysis of the impact of Social media on different aspects of business.

Particularly, the course focuses on three main issues:

• Brand Management and Stakeholders engagement, which gives students an overview of how companies are facing the challenge of increased stakeholders engagement;
• New Business Models in Web 2.0, which provides students an introduction on how stakeholders engage in the construction of brands and brand community, exploring concepts such as user generated content, open-innovation, open-business;
• Measuring Reputation and Relational Capital, which gives students an overview of the traditional measures of company reputation and the new social-media based indicators, such as sentiment analysis and opinion mining.