engleski

Country Image and Product Brand Image as Competitive Marketing Strategy Factors

For several years, consumers in many countries have possibility to buy well-known products from all over the world. Moreover, through broadening of satellite communications, travel, the Internet, and increase of education level, consumers have at least visual (but more often real) possibility to become familiar with products and services, and to evaluate them. As a result of these worldwide conceptions, brand image and country of origin image considerably influence the consumer product choice and consumer behavior. The idea to what extent brand image and country of origin image influence the building of producer’ s competitive advantage, determines how we are going to use these images as a marketing strategy instrument in domestic and foreign markets. For the purpose of testing these concepts, we used convenience sample of undergraduate students (N=150) at the Faculty of Economics and Business, Zagreb University. We attempted to verify the hypothesis that country image for small countries is more important than brand image in forming total competitive advantage. On the basis of theoretical and empirical notions related to country and product image, and on the basis of detailed comparative analysis of previous scientific research results, we proposed the image management model for the Republic of Croatia. Proposed model will serve as a basis for future scientific research’ s possibility for transfer the Republic of Croatia image to the image of Croatian products, people, services and all other concepts and values that will be coming from Croatia.

country of origin image; country image; product brand image; dimensions of image; image transfer; image management model

nije evidentirano