New Way of Country Branding by Factors of Irrationality and the New Advantages of its Acceptability, Affordability, Accessibility and Awareness

Abstract

In this article main focus is on country/nation/people branding. The acceptance of the Nation Branding is growing. Strong National brand, as an asset, has not only advantages in international commerce but also in public diplomacy (Szondi, 2008). But people’s branding, that means the ethnic group’s brand building, is still not well known in marketing. If country brand mostly includes rational values, ethnic groups – people
are usually known by their irrationalities.
The main assumption of this article is that, in order for the country brand to improve, it must achieve high marks on all four A’s: Acceptability, Affordability, Accessibility and Awareness. Well combined, these attributes are called the 4A’s. The 4A framework derives from a customervalue perspective based on the four distinct roles that customers play in the market: seekers, selectors, payers and users, using some combination of rational and irrational tools of branding, discovered by the research undertaken for this article. The concept of 4-A-s belongs to famous Jagdish Sheth, professor of Emory University who the author of this article met at Kennesaw State University in 2015.
As a research method the famous Delphi method was used in order to gain expert views and opinions on the issue of country. The information obtained through this qualitative method enabled us to establish prerequisites for the successful establishment of the Country Brand Formula (CBF). Using Delphi method, completed in 2 stages, 57 journalists who write about tourism and the countries that they travel to, were surveyed. But in the process of marketing research new horizons of Country marketing were found: the research crew was surprised when it faced new dilemma about choice irrationality. The countries mostly appreciated by people, have more irrationality than rationality. The process of country
branding goes well when some sort of irrationality: beneficial irrationality exceeds rationality. This was a big surprise, one worthy of exploring.