A SENSITIVE AREA IN COMMUNICATION STUDIES: COUNTRY BRAND

Abstract

The concepts of brand and branding have been an important agenda item of the organizations in recent years. Country brand has also gained importance following the export of commercial products and the increase in the revenue based on tourism. There are ongoing controversies over country brand concept. It has been found that there are a few studies on this issue in Turkish literature. Moreover, as having a political dimension, the topic of country and city brands is wide enough to work on. Country brands cannot be managed as easily as trademarks, there are many decision- makers, the area which the brand spans and people who are affected by brand management consist of different groups, there are historical prejudices and background and target people are varied. Thus, ‘country brand’ can be considered as a ‘sensitive’ area. It is substantially aimed at detecting the dimensions which constitute country brand. In this context, this paper is regarded as exploratory research. This paper focuses on explaining the concept of country brand and components of it. After theoretical framework, there will be a research including the attitude of students in Turkey towards brands and what components they take into consideration to accept something is a brand.