Branding nations with new molecule model
Research by Professor José Rojas-Méndez will help countries better market themselves to attract international resources.
What comes to mind when you think of France? The Eiffel Tower or the Louvre perhaps? What about Egypt? The pyramids maybe? And Canada? Niagara Falls? Maple syrup? What if you were asked to associate a personality trait with a specific country? Would you think of Australia as friendly? Germany as disciplined? Saudi Arabia as mysterious?
Well, 532 university graduates from 20 different countries did just that recently when Sprott’s researcher and Bachelor of International Business program director José Rojas-Méndez interviewed them to identify their impressions of 26 countries around the globe – including Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, Turkey, South Korea, Nigeria, Mexico, Argentina and Chile.
Rojas-Méndez has been studying what he calls nation brand personality for the past five years and has published several papers on the topic. But his research paper, The nation brand molecule, which appeared in the Journal of Product & Brand Management in 2013, was a project stimulated by a desire to mainly guide resource-deprived developing countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa in differentiating themselves in order to attract tourists, investors, students and other stakeholders from abroad.
It’s the first time a paper has explored so many dimensions comprising a nation brand construct at a multinational level. Indexes currently used for many country-branding projects don’t necessarily examine the aspects of a country that need to be measured in order to show off their strengths.
Branding used to be only about differentiating a product among its competitors. But in the 20th century, corporate branding became a common marketing practice as companies created their own identities and culture with logos and jargon specific to their products and services. The branding of a nation, on the other hand, is still a very novel concept and, according to Rojas-Méndez, it has been of a rather haphazard nature.
“Recent history shows several cases where significant resources have been wasted on ineffective nation branding campaigns,” he writes in The nation brand molecule.
Rojas-Méndez set about determining how people in France, China, Chile and many other countries “brand” other nations in their own minds and he ended up with 7,000 “associations,” which he then categorized and mapped into a “molecule.”
The “atoms” making up the metaphorical molecule are represented by seven main categories or “dimensions,” including the economy, tourism, culture and heritage, but also geography and nature and science and technology, aspects not generally considered by private sources when measuring the “brand” of a country.
These atoms or dimensions create a network of interrelated pieces of information, opinions, perceptions and beliefs. Rojas-Méndez ran the content by five experts in sociology, psychology, history, business and linguists before finalizing his molecule according to their assessments.
“Nation branding strategies,” says Rojas-Méndez, “should not be developed as silos based on one or two specific dimensions exclusively without considering the impact on or by other relevant concepts. National brand managers should embrace a more holistic approach when developing an international positioning strategy, which allows their country to differentiate from what competitors are offering.”
Rojas-Méndez admits his study has some limitations, by interviewing only graduate students and not weighting the dimensions, but future studies could include individuals from the general population and present a wider question base.
“This is the first paper to address this topic this comprehensively,” notes Rojas-Méndez, who points to the importance of being able to “sell” a country. “You don’t use the whole nation brand molecule. You look for the strengths and identify the sub-dimensions that might be more effective. The more differentiated you are on attributes that attract consumers, the higher your chance of success.
“The molecule will help countries write the book about what their country is about, instead of allowing others to write a book by default,” he adds. “It is an objective practical tool, easy to understand, that gives a whole picture to use as a starting point in developing a marketing strategy for a country.”
“In general,” says Rojas-Méndez, “towns, cities, regions, provinces and countries are fighting for international resources that are scarce. The better a nation positions itself, the more successful it will be in attracting those limited resources.”
In further projects, Rojas-Méndez has already collected data for his nation brand personality research to measure China’s view of Canada and the United States; to test the “self-congruity theory” that connects consumers’ personality traits with countries that have similar personalities; and to study some 500 consumers’ associations towards wines from 15 major exporters including France and Chile.
José I. Rojas-Méndez is Associate Professor of International Business and Marketing, and Director of the Bachelor of International Business, at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business.
Story by: Susan Hickman