Page 106 - MYM 2016

Improving Economic Prosperity through Nation Branding
fig. 4: a comparison of the individual country rankings of Japan and the U.s. on each of the measured attributes
attributes
United states best countries rankings
Japan best countries rankings
Overall
4
7
Adventure
27
32
Citizenship
11
14
Cultural In uence
3
6
Entrepreneurship
3
2
Heritage
22
7
Movers
22
5
Open for Business
23
22
Power
1
7
Quality of Life
14
11
Some people may not agree with their nation’s rankings, but the rankings are not a re ection of objective facts. Rather, the rankings re ect how a large sample of residents, business decision makers, and educated elites worldwide subjectively per- ceive the nation. Whether or not the perceptions are accurate, they exist. To the extent the people of a nation believe they are misperceived, they must work to change those misperceptions by improving reality.
Which nations had the highest self-evaluations relative to how the rest of the world views them? Israel and India. at is, the people of these nations perceived their nations to rank higher than the
rest of the world would rank them. Are the people of these nations wrong or is the rest of the world wrong? Are these cases of self-deception or lack
of external understanding? Regardless, the gap between self-perception and external perception suggests that these nations would bene t from well-designed and well-executed long-term brand- ing campaigns.
conclusion
Whether they like it or not, nations have brands. e value of their brands has a direct in u- ence on their economies—most speci cally on tourism, exports, and foreign direct investment.
Like the most successful corpo- rations, nations would bene t
economically from creating e ec- tive nation branding campaigns to improve their brands.
However, for a nation to alter perceptions—i.e., to reposition its nation brand—it must make
a focused e ort to change the perception that other people have of the nation. If negative percep- tions accurately re ect reality, the nation should change its policies. If negative perceptions are inac- curate, the nation should change the minds of the world about these misperceptions.
Which are the important attributes for a nation to change? e ones that a ect the nation’s economy the most: Entrepre-
neurship (17.42% correlation to GDP per capita); Citizenship (16.95% correlation to GDP per capita); and Quality of Life (16.89% correlation to GDP per capita).
For a nation to understand how its nation brand is viewed globally, surveying perceptions by participants in the global economy is a rst step
and an opportunity for nations to more actively manage their image. However, no matter how great the repositioning campaign, change will not happen overnight. Fortunately, we are committed to con- tinuing this nation branding survey on an annual basis. e point of the Best Countries study is to emphasize the economic importance of how others view nations. It is an issue beyond national pride.
A nation’s brand a ects its economy. What other people in the world think about us matters to our everyday lives. Our actions, visible on a global scale, have economic consequences far beyond the direct cost of those actions. ■
David J. Reibstein is the William S. Woodside Professor and Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, USA.
Acknowledgment: Special thanks to Tom Lincoln and Anna Blender for their support in this work.
106 | MINd YOUr MarkETING OCTOBEr 2016