Survival of the fittest: The impact of eco-certification and reputation on firm performance

Owing to the increased trend for organic products and the concept of sustainable development, firms must invest in valuable and unique resources to achieve long-term success and gain competitive advantages. Building on insights from the resource-based view and natural-resource-based view of the firm, the study focuses on the contribution of corporate reputation and eco-certification as intangible influences on corporate performance. Duration analysis is applied on a sample of 1,572 German wineries over the period 1994 to 2017. The results indicate that individual reputation and eco-certification have a statistically significant and positively impact on corporate performance, whereas there is no clear evidence of this relationship for collective reputation. In addition, especially those firms with high individual reputation benefit most from eco-certification. These results are robust across different parametric and semiparametric model estimations.