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Abstract
This paper examines how widely held country images affect attitudes towards a country's products and services and ability to attract investment, businesses and tourists. It assesses the role of strategic marketing management in promoting the country's image, attractiveness and products.
COUNTRIES AS BRANDS AND PRODUCTS
Because product features are easily copied, brands have been considered a marketer's major tool for creating product differentiation. Even when differentiation based on product characteristics is possible, often consumers do not feel motivated or able to analyse them in adequate depth. Therefore the combination of brand name and brand significance has become a core competitive asset in an ever-growing number of contexts.1
The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a 'name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competition'. Brands differentiate products and represent a promise of value. Brands incite beliefs, evoke emotions and prompt behaviours. Marketers often extend successful brand names to new product launches, lending existing associations to them. As a result, they speed up consumers' information processing and learning. Brands have social and emotional value to users. They have personality and speak for the user. They enhance the perceived utility and desirability of a product. Brands have the ability to add to or subtract from the perceived value of a product. On one hand, consumers expect to pay lower prices for unbranded products or for those with low brand equities. On the other hand, they pay premiums for their treasured or socially valued brands. Brands have equity for both customers and investors. Brand equity translates into customer preference, loyalty and financial gains. Brands are appraised and traded in the marketplace. Brand equity has been pointed out to include many dimensions, such as performance, social image, value, trustworthiness and identification.2
The question here is: can a country be a brand? Is there such thing as country brand equity? Shimp et al.3 applied the term 'country equity', referring to the emotional value resulting from consumers' association of a brand with a country. Country names amount to brands and help consumers evaluate products and make purchasing decisions. They are responsible for associations that...