An empirical study to find important factors on building national brand: An Iranian tourism case study

Abstract: Building national brand plays an important role on today & apos; s economy to attract interested tourists in visiting various countries. There are different factors impacting national brand such as advertisement, natural attraction, etc. In this paper, we perform an empirical investigation to find the impact of ten most important factors on building brand. The study designs and distributes a questionnaire among 384 international tourists who visited Iran during the year of 2010 and it uses factor analysis to group important factors. The results extract four groups; the first factor includes three most important components including satellite advertisement programs, public awareness on economical power and public awareness on specialized symposium and conferences. The second factor includes three other important factors, which are public awareness on human right, advertisement programs through distribution brushers and internet advertisement. The third factor includes two variables, which are public awareness on education and access to educational services and introducing cultural heritage. Finally, the last factor includes introducing natural attraction and advertisement programs through distribution brushers.

How to cite this paper

 Hakimipour, A & Bozorgkho, H. (2012). An empirical study to find important factors on building national brand: An Iranian tourism case study.Management Science Letters , 2(8), 3073-3080.

Refrences

Aaker, D. A. (1991). Managing Brand Equity. New York: The Free Press.
Aaker, D. A. (1996). Building Strong Brands. New York: The Free Press.
Aaker, D. A., & Shansby, J. G. (1982). Positioning your product. Business Horizons, 25(3), 56-62.
Aaker, J. L. (1997). Dimensions of brand personality. Journal of Marketing Research, 34(3), 347.
Anholt, S. (2002). Nation Branding: A continuing theme. Journal of Brand Management, 10(1), 59.
Baloglu, S. (1996). An empirical investigation of determinants of tourist destination image. Unpublished dissertation. Virginia Polytechnic University, Blacksburg, Virginia.
Baloglu, S., & Brinberg, D. (1997). Affective images of tourism destination. Journal of Travel Research, 35(4), 11-15.
Baloglu, S., & Mangaloglu, M. (2001). Tourism destination images of Turkey, Egypt, Greece, and Italy as perceived by US-based tour operators and travel agents. Tourism Management, 22(1), 1-9.
Baloglu, S., & McCleary, K. (1999). A model of destination image formation. Annals of Tourism Research, 26(4), 868-897.
Cai, A. (2002). Cooperative branding for rural destinations. Annals of Tourism Research, 29(3), 720-742.
Cai, L. A., Feng, R., & Breiter, D. (2004). Tourist purchase decision involvement and information preferences. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 10(2), 138-148.
Caldwell, N., & Freire, J. R. (2004). The differences between branding a country, a region and a city: Applying the Brand Box Model. Journal of Brand Management, 12(1), 50-61.
Cronbach, L. J. (1951). Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests. Psychometrika, 16, 297-334.
Cronbach, L. J., & Meehl, P. E. (1955). Construct validity in psychological tests. Psychological Bulletin, 52, 281-302.
Gilmore, F. (2002). A country--can it be repositioned? Spain--the success story of country branding. Journal of Brand Management, 9(4/5), 281.
Hall, D. (2002). Brand development, tourism and national identity: The re-imaging of former Yugoslavia. Journal of Brand Management, 9(4/5), 323.
Harrison, S. (2002). Culture, tourism and local community--the heritage identity of the Isle of Man. Journal of Brand Management, 4/5, 355.
Florek, M. (2005). The country brand as a new challenge for Poland. Place Branding, 1(2), 205-214.
Florek, M., Insch, A., & Gnoth, J. (2006). City council websites as a means of place brand identity communication. Place Branding, 2(4), 276e296.
Kapferer, J. (1997). Strategic brand management. Great Britain: Kogan Page.
Keller, K. L. (1993). Conceptualizing, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity. Journal of Marketing, 57(1), 1e22.
Keller, K. L. (2008). Strategic Brand Management: Building, Measuring, and Managing Brand Equity (3rd ed.). New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Kleppe, I. A., Iversen, N. M., & Stensaker, I. G. (2002). Country images in marketing strategies: Conceptual issues and an empirical Asian illustration. Journal of Brand Management, 10(1), 61.
Kotler, P., & Gertner, D. (2002). Country as brand, products, and beyond: A place marketing and brand management perspective. Journal of Brand Management, 9(4/5), 249.
Kotler, P. H. (1991). Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, and Control (8 ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Kra, P. (2002). The concept of national character in 18th century France [Electronic Version]. Cromohs, 1-6. Retrieved February 18, 2007 from http://www.cromohs.unifi.it/7_2002/kra.html#np1
Lodge, C. (2002). Success and failure: The brand stories of two countries. Journal of Brand Management, 9(4/5), 372.
Mathieson,A. and Wall,G. (1982) Tourism: Economic, Physical and Social Impacts. Longman, Harlow.
Middleton, V.(1994) Marketing in Travel and Tourism, 2nd edition, Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford
Mill, R.C, & Morrison A.M. (1992) The Tourism System, 2nd edition, Prentice Hall International, London
Morgan, N., Pritchard, A., & Piggott, R. (2002). New Zealand, 100% Pure. The creation of a powerful niche destination brand. Journal of Brand Management, 9(4/5), 335.
Paswan, A. K., Kulkarni, S., & Ganesh, G. (2003). Nation Branding Loyalty towards the country, the state and the service brands. Journal of Brand Management, 10(3), 233.
Pike, S. (2009). Destination brand positions of a competitive set of near-home destinations. Tourism Management, 30(6), 857-866.
Ryan, C., & Gu, H. (2008). Destination branding and marketing: the role of marketing organizations. In H. Oh (Ed.), Handbook of hospitality marketing management (pp. 383-411). Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Starr, A. (2001). Charlotte Beers’ toughest sell [Electronic Version]. Business Week Online.
Tabrizi, N., Taghvaei, M., & Varesi, H.R. (2012). A fuzzy application on MICE hosting: An Iranian case study for locating suitable areas based on P.L Indexes. Management Science Letters, 2(2), 503-510.
Zarabi, A., & Ahmadi, D. (2012). Ranking different cities and villages in province of Isfahan based of analysis of social indicator during the statistic period 1996-2006. Management Science Letters, 2(6), 2077–2084.