Brand, specifically a strong brand, is incredibly valuable and influential to a company’s success. Brands reside in the mind of a consumer and differentiate a company from its competitors. Brands can similarly be applied to countries and nations. While marketing research in branding focuses on its applications to companies, we aim to investigate the effects of a nation’s brand on its economy and international perceptions. Background research to determine overall perceptions and rankings of countries indicates that a nation’s brand does in fact directly influence its economy (Reibstein 2017). A strong brand can entice more tourism as well as draw greater investment in the country. Thus, it is pertinent for nations to be aware of their brand, its impact on their economy, as well as be cognizant of strategies to improve and maximize their brand.
While a great deal of work has been conducted on the impact of country of origin on product perception (Piron 2000), very little work has looked at the opposite relationship of the impact that product quality has on nation branding. We hypothesize that one of the major impacts on the brand of a nation is perceptions of the quality of the nation’s exports and production. Such a phenomenon would have monumental ramifications on how countries value their exports and industrial outputs and would pave the way to novel strategies to improve nation branding.
Brand, specifically a strong brand, is incredibly valuable and influential to a company’s success. Brands reside in the mind of a consumer and differentiate a company from its competitors. Brands can similarly be applied to countries and nations. While marketing research in branding focuses on its applications to companies, we aim to investigate the effects of a nation’s brand on its economy and international perceptions. Background research to determine overall perceptions and rankings of countries indicates that a nation’s brand does in fact directly influence its economy (Reibstein 2017). A strong brand can entice more tourism as well as draw greater investment in the country. Thus, it is pertinent for nations to be aware of their brand, its impact on their economy, as well as be cognizant of strategies to improve and maximize their brand.
While a great deal of work has been conducted on the impact of country of origin on product perception (Piron 2000), very little work has looked at the opposite relationship of the impact that product quality has on nation branding. We hypothesize that one of the major impacts on the brand of a nation is perceptions of the quality of the nation’s exports and production. Such a phenomenon would have monumental ramifications on how countries value their exports and industrial outputs and would pave the way to novel strategies to improve nation branding.