Sustainability as an element of corporate identity: multimodal analysis of an Italian coffee company’s website

Abstract The present paper originates from a research partnership established between the author and the Italian coffee company Caffè Motta (Salerno) within a research project held between 2022 and 2024. The project, which included the collection of both oral and written documents, interviews, and visits to the plant, aimed to investigate the company’s sustainability initiatives and policies to produce a bilingual glossary of sustainability. As part of this broad project, the present study considers the English ‘Sustainability’ page from Caffè Motta’s website to answer several research questions about the choice of specific images to represent corporate sustainability. The first part of the analysis provides a multimodal analysis of both verbal and visual elements. Subsequently, the analysis reflects on whether these texts and images effectively convey the company’s sustainability messages, given its wide range of initiatives and actions currently implemented. Finally, the paper discusses the role of culture in the construction and interpretation of sustainability images, as well as the function of sustainability in corporate identity building, particularly considering Italy’s renowned ‘coffee culture’. Overall, this study aims to complete the mapping of the company’s available sustainability information, also in light of the forthcoming glossary to be used for the company’s sustainability communications.