Beyond Nation Branding to Building Country Brands through Marketing Mix

Abstract

Beyond Nation Branding to Building Country Brands through Marketing Mix 1. Background Strategic marketing of places can improve the countries position and competitive advantage in the global market. Anholt (2002) acknowledged that branding and marketing strategies can be applied to countries to build economic cultural wealth and improving its competitive position in the global market (Queiroz & Giraldi, 2015). According to Kotler (2002) even without strategic efforts, countries already have an image. This image can either be negative or positive and can determines the decision to purchase its products, the decisions to visit, and the decision to invest in (Queiroz & Giraldi, 2015). The reputation of a country can attract tourists, stimulate exports, investments and immigrants which in turn contributes to sustainable development. A favorable country image attracts investment, tourism, donors, foreigners willing to study and live in a country, people willing to buy products from a specific county of origin (Che-Ha, Nguyen, Yahya, Melewar, & Chen, 2016). There is increasing competition among countries based on international markets to sell their products or to attract visitors. This calls for countries to position themselves and build a reputation that is desirable. previous studies indicate a one unit increase in country reputation translates to 0.9% increase in the proportion of income from tourists while same unit translates to 0.3% increase in open markets for export (Prado & Trad, 2018). Although competition among countries has intensified, the performance of African countries has not been impressive. Between the years 2014-2015 Japan was ranked position 1, Switzerland displaced to position 2, Germany position 3 Sweden position 4, Canada position 5 Norway position 6, United States position 7, Australia position 8 while Denmark and Austria position 9 and 10 respectively. It should be noted that New Zealand and Finland were displaced from the top 10 country brands with only 22 countries meeting the minimum qualifications to be considered as country brands, Similarly, no African country was ranked among the top 25 (Future Brand, 2014). Based on quality of life, value system, tourism, heritage and culture, Made in, no African country qualified to be called a country brand. South Africa was the top African country ranking position 40, followed by Egypt position 54, morocco 57, Kenya 65, Zimbabwe 69, Ghana 70, and Nigeria 75. 1.1. Building a Country as Brand Kotler et al. (1993) becomes the first author to combine strategic marketing, place branding and economic development. The effect of marketing cannot be standardized, neither can it be reduced to mere financial objectives. It's important for companies or organizations to understand how to position their brands in the market both in the short term and in the long run (Hsieh, 2004). Scholars have argued that nation branding goes beyond image boosting (Viktorin,