Country branding through Olympic Games

Abstract

Recent geopolitical and economic events make it very clear that the global market place is highly interconnected and very competitive (Lee and Cull, 2010; Levin, 2010; Yung, 2011). To gain competitive advantage, countries, in conjunction with their own multinational firms, strive to develop and implement creative nation branding strategies and to promote positive country brand images (Anholt, 1998; Paswan et al, 2002; Loo and Davies, 2006; Szondi, 2006; Greyser, 2008). Countries compete with each other for foreign investment, for tourists, buyers, overseas students and skilled workers (Beverland and Lindgreen, 2002; Anholt, 2003; Black and Westhuizen, 2004; Dzenovska, 2005; Papadopoulos, 2004; Florek and Conejo, 2006; Dinnie, 2008). Several researchers (for example, O’Shaughnessy and O’Shaughnessy, 2000; Papadopoulos and Heslop, 2000, 2002; Paswan et al, 2002) have suggested that a country could be considered as a brand, and that countries can change their national brand image. Strategic and tactical activities have been suggested to influence a country’s brand image (Nebenzahl and Jaffe, 1991; Jaffe and Nebenzahl, 1993; Swart and Bob, 2004), including hosting major sporting events. However, to the best of our knowledge, few have examined the effect of hosting a major sporting event on country brand image, and where they have the focus was limited to the impact on the destination’s image and tourism (Gibson et al, 2008).