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This article examines the effects of brand image country image and familiarity with both brand and country on consumer evaluation of binational brands. Specifically two sub‐constructs of country image: overall image and product specific image and three different types of familiarity: product familiarity brand familiarity and country familiarity are identified and utilized. Hypotheses based on categorization theory are developed and tested using a mail survey of a random sample of US households. The study shows that product specific image plays a mediating role between overall country image and consumer evaluation. With product and brand familiarity moderate familiarity consumers utilize country‐of‐origin information less than low or high familiarity consumers. Likewise with country familiarity low familiarity consumers rely more on country‐of‐origin information than high familiarity consumers.

Attitudes towards a specific product or brand could be substantially changed, both favourably and unfavourably, when the country of origin of the product/brand was revealed to the consumer. States that countries have images too, perhaps not so far removed from the marketers' concept of 'brand image'. Aims in this study, to reveal the current stereotypical attitudes of UK consumers towards domestic products and the product offerings from a selection of foreign countries highly active in the UK domestic market. Leans heavily on the cumulative refinements arising from studies conducted in Japan and the USA owing to lack of similar research in the UK. Discusses this in some detail citing the major players in references and showing both methodology and results from the UK, West Germany, Japan, France, Italy, the USA, and the USSR. Concludes that stereotype represents a simple and effective measure for revealing the impact of such changes (nationalism or re‐emphasis on national traits) on the strength of a nation — offering a basis for the development of individual marketing strategies.

This chapter considers the importation of brand images, a key concept in marketing studies, within anthropological approaches to culture and consumption. It does so through examining modes of cultural valuation toward “Made in China” products on the part of consumers. Following theoretical lines recently established by anthropologists in the study of culture, commodification, and consumption in global settings, and their emphasis upon culture as a label for goods, it also brings into the discussion issues in geopolitics and ethnicity, especially from the viewpoint of ethnographic evidence collected in France and Nepal. “Made in China” products are enmeshed in complex, intermingling, and conflicting imaginations of the Other, brand images, and are associated with the underlying social logic of consumption or avoidance of consumption, often paradoxical, but intelligible in both broad-ranging and local contexts.

Due to the intense rivalry in the smartphone market, manufacturers of mobile phones are becoming increasingly interested in knowing the factors that influence consumers' purchase intention. This paper aims to examine the effect of country-of-origin image, brand image and attitude towards the brand on the purchase intention of smartphone users.

An empirical study was performed based on the information gathered from smartphone users. The structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was applied to examine the hypotheses.

The authors found that brand image and attitude towards the brand significantly influence consumer purchase intention. Additionally, there is an indirect effect even when the nation of origin image does not directly influence the consumer's purchase intention. Indeed, brand image and attitude towards the brand act as a mediator between the country-of-origin image and purchase intention.

This study presents a conceptual model on the impact of country-of-origin image on the propensity of consumers to buy smartphones in a field where little research has been done. The investigation offers a consumer-focused analysis regarding the country-of-origin image. This suggests a significant shift from the current strategy, which is frequently centered on the viewpoint of the companies.

The aim of this paper is to review the use of scenario‐building at the central government level in New Zealand and to consider an alternative technique – national imaging – for stimulating public discussion of the future.

The paper briefly surveys New Zealand's history of prospective government before examining scenario construction during the Foresight Project convened by the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology during the late 1990s. Both the official scenarios produced and the guidance given to sector participants to produce their own scenarios are discussed.

Scenario‐building in a national government context has pitfalls and limitations, namely that the technique is too ambitious, too socially unitary, and too implicitly long‐term to be really useful as a primary focus. Consideration of the shortcomings gives rise to an alternative procedure which focuses on developing images of national identity or conduct rather than envisioning or predicting future states.

Scenario building need not be dispensed with, but should be subordinated to democratic discussion of ways of collectively orienting to the future.

The paper introduces a new technique of “national imaging” as one that may better serve as an initial (not exclusive) tool of democratic envisioning of the future at the national level.

Using the theoretical frameworks of public diplomacy and public relations, we mapped how the Chinese government has used panda imagery to build its national brand on Twitter and how this ‘panda diplomacy’ has facilitated its para-diplomatic actions. Our findings uncover new attempts by the Chinese government to engage in digital diplomacy. Mobilizing panda imagery on Twitter enhanced friendly relations with foreign political leaders and people and established a friendly and peaceful image of China on Twitter.

This study employed a cognitive psychological approach to examining a little studied phenomenon – university image – among two groups of evaluators. The study found that different groups used different criteria when rating ten major US universities. Found to significantly predict the image of the universities among a sample of current university students were three factors: academic factors, athletic factors, and the extent of news coverage of the university. Found to significantly predict the image of the same universities among an adult, non‐student sample were four factors: a combined factor including all university attributes (including academic and athletic); the extent of news coverage; the education level of respondents; and the respondents’ level of sports fanship. Recent research in attitude structure is used to explain how different image criteria are recalled and employed by the different groups.

The purpose of this paper is to explore problematisations of urban diversity in urban and integration policies in Denmark and Sweden; the paper aims to show how such policies express social imaginaries about the self and the other and underlying assumptions of sameness that legitimise diverging ways of managing urban diversity and (re)organising the city.

Inspired by anthropology of policy and post-structural approaches to policy analysis, the authors approach urban and integration policies as cultural texts that are central to the organisation of cities and societies. With a comparative approach, the authors explore how visions of diversity take shape and develop over time in Swedish and Danish policies on urban development and integration.

Swedish policy constructs productiveness as crucial to the imagined national sameness, whereas Danish policy constructs cultural sameness as fundamental to the national self-image. By constructing the figure of “the unproductive”/“the non-Western” as the other, diverging from an imagined sameness, policies for organising the city through removing and “improving” urban diverse others are legitimised.

The authors add to previous research by focussing on the construction of the self as crucial in processes of othering and by highlighting how both nationalistic and colour-blind policy discourses construct myths of national sameness, which legitimise the governing of urban diversity. The authors highlight and de-naturalise assumptions and categorisations by showing how problem representations differ over time and between two neighbouring countries.

Building upon previous research on country-of-origin. This study aims to investigate whether the effects of country-of-origin extend to the hotel industry, based on associative network and signaling theories.

Based on a self-administered survey with tourists in China, this paper investigates antecedents and outcomes of hotel brand image and the moderating role of a hotel’s brand origin.

Results reveal country, city and industry images positively influence hotel brand image. Hotel brand image then influences price perception, quality perception and overall satisfaction.

Country-of-operation image remains a relevant, powerful predictor of brand image; thus, hotels need to carefully manage country-of-operation image.

This paper incorporates and establishes the role of country-of-operation image on hotel brand image.