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Creation of an umbrella national branding strategy

Akker, Daniëlle van den (2011) Creation of an umbrella national branding strategy.

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Abstract:Nations have become more business-like and market-oriented in their economic development activities as a result of external competition and internal political pressures, and therefore must manage and control their branding. Nation branding is identified as an important way to create an economical advantage and is therefore an important tool for countries. The focus of nation branding research has however mainly focused on the tourism segment until now. Yet, the economical image of a country is identified as an important segment of nation branding. Besides that, although quite some research is done on nation branding, there is a limited amount of studies that focus on the creation of a nation branding strategy. Finally, in the literature much is written about whether umbrella nation branding is possible, but no consensus is reached yet, and also, this is not applied in relation to nation branding strategies yet. Therefore the focus of this research is on the creation of an umbrella nation branding strategy that focuses on the economical image of the country. Based on this argumentation, the research question is defined as follows: In what way can governments create an umbrella nation branding strategy that focuses on the economical image of a country to attract inward investments and to promote exports and which is also aligned with the nation branding activities of the other segments? To answer this research question, a small-n case study approach is used to collect and analyse the data. Three successful cases (the Netherlands, Ireland and Spain) are selected on the basis of the dependent variables “increase in attraction of investments” and “increase in exports” and on the basis of experts. Of these three cases it is analyzed in what way they created their nation branding strategy and how they have used the concept of umbrella nation branding. These cases are analyzed together with the theoretical framework in a cross-case analysis. Based on this analysis, the theoretical framework is improved. The findings of this research are presented in figure 1. In figure 1 it is presented in what way an umbrella nation branding strategy that focuses on the economical image of a country can be created best. Since most governments do not have the budget to execute all of these steps, each government should decide, based on its motivation for the creation of a nation branding strategy, which steps are most important. However, in this research some steps are identified as most crucial, which are the development of a vision and goals and the development of the brand values, the brand positioning and the brand architecture. Finally, this research has contributed to both the theory of nation branding (strategy formulation, umbrella nation branding, economical image of a country) and the practice of nation branding (strategy formulation, success cases, umbrella nation branding and the economical image of the country).
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:85 business administration, organizational science
Programme:Business Administration MSc (60644)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/61495
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