Title:
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Nation branding: how the national image of the United Kingdom affects its outputs
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Competition between nations increasingly takes place across all the outputs of a nation,
including products, tourism, location for foreign direct investment and many more. A
favourable national image for outputs to benefit from is a competitive advantage in the
international arena because foreign publics tend to use a nation's image to infer the quality of
its outputs. They are more receptive to outputs from certain countries and are willing to pay
more for them, such as French perfume, Swiss timepieces, Italian design, et cetera. However,
a nation's image is often steeped in stereotypes, which mayor may not be true. Therefore,
many nations are undertaking branding exercises to enhance their images.
It has been suggested by academics and practitioners that a nation brand can be managed like a
corporate brand. While there is a great deal of intuitive appeal to the proposition, there is
neither theoretical foundation nor empirical data to support it. This thesis attempts to fill this
gap in knowledge by looking at whether there is a basis for nation branding. The possible
links between a nation's image, the image of its outputs and how they affect consumer
behaviour are examined.
This thesis proposes that a nation brand can be conceptualised like a corporate brand because
there are similarities between the two. The first similarity is that like a corporation with
many products, a nation has many outputs. The second similarity is that both a nation brand
and a corporate brand face multiple stakeholders. While a nation has citizens, government,
foreign publics that consume its different outputs, a corporation has staff, a management team,
consumers of its products and so on. Last, and most importantly, the corporate masterbrand
vs. product sub-brand architecture is a suitable structure for conceptualising the relationship
between the nation's overall image and the image of its output sub-brands.
Since there is little in the literature to guide specific hypotheses, four research propositions
were formulated to guide the research. Using the 'theory of reasoned action' (Ajzen &
Fishbein, 1980; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) as a framework, a theoretical model on how the
overall image of the UK affects three of its outputs, namely products (for export), tourism and
education, was developed and tested. If there are national images that hold true across
different outputs and can predict consumers' intention to consume, then they can be used in a
nation branding exercise.
In order to test the theoretical model, proper measurement scales to measure the constructs are
essential. The scale for the overall national image needs to be generic, so that it can straddle
across all the outputs of a nation. A Corporate Character Scale by Davies et al. (2004) was
adopted for this purpose. Scales for measuring image of the individual outputs were
developed specific to the characteristics of the three outputs. Structural equation modelling
was used to test the model against data collected from China and India. After
re-specification, a parsimonious model, which showed that Chic (prestigious, refined, elegant)
and Enterprise (innovative, cool, trendy) were image dimensions that best represented the UK
and affected its three outputs of products, tourism and education in the eyes of Chinese and
Indian young adults. Analysis and discussions on the findings are furnished, with
suggestions for future research.
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