The relationship of financial performance and reputation: A qualitative research on the loan allocation process

Reputation, which is difficult to imitate, has become an important part of corporate life with the competitive advantage it creates in the new age, where technology is rapidly penetrating into our lives and competitive conditions are getting tougher. Due to the increasing importance of reputation, it has started to be studied by different disciplines. Reputation, which does not have a common definition of consensus, is subject to different evaluations in terms of different stakeholder groups. Its definition and importance differ for each stakeholder group. Although the definition and importance of reputation has been studied in terms of different stakeholder groups, this study focuses on how creditors define and evaluate the concept of reputation. In the study, it has been determined that the creditors mostly use the concepts of financial success and market intelligence when evaluating the reputation. The study was carried out on 6 different dimensions of reputation in the reputation coefficient model developed by Fombrun, and an answer was sought to the question of how reputation is defined and evaluated in the eyes of credit analysts in these 6 dimensions perspective. From this point of view, it is seen that credit analysts define reputation mainly under the dimension of emotional attractiveness, followed by the dimensions of vision and leadership and financial performance. Within the scope of this research, a semi-structured interview form was prepared and 22 participants engaged in loan allocation activities were conducted face-to-face or by making video calls via Zoom. In the research, it is focused on how effective reputation is in credit evaluation processes and the effect of non-financial dimensions of reputation on credit evaluation process. In line with the interviews, the codes were determined and the analysis was made on 71 thematic codes. In the generated codes and interview details, it was concluded that credit analysts consider reputation important in the credit evaluation process, however, in certain cases, credit analysts consider non-financial aspects of reputation more important than financial performance. Keywords: Reputation, Credit, Financial Performance, Social Responsibility