Social identity, collective self esteem and country reputation: the case of Pakistan
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to show how the relative global status of a country influences its internal country reputation and resulting social cognitions of citizens.
Design/methodology/approach
The theories of social identity and collective self-esteem were employed to explain how self-assessment and evaluations of a country’s reputation are regulated by social concepts and vice versa. The structural equation modeling technique was employed to estimate the conjectural relations.
Findings
The groups which people belong to are their primary source of pride and self-esteem. But if a country is negatively stereotyped on the global stage, it weakens the ability of people to live their nation’s brand. A formidable nation’s brand can only be constructed if people are deeply involved and committed to it.
Practical implications
The results of this study have implications for policymakers, nation’s branding experts and researchers to focus on internal branding of nations. The academicians and researchers should focus more on the internal audiences in their role as a “communication medium” to external audiences. A more purposeful internal branding will promote community strengthening and enable people to act as a mouth piece in communicating a desired experience to external audiences.
Originality/value
The existing nations branding literature does not show how relative global status of a country influences self-assessment and evaluations of people’s associations with that country. The present study aims to fill this gap by drawing on the theories of social identity, self-categorization and collective self-esteem to show how people’s self-perception in negatively perceived countries is regulated in relation to their country’s relative global status and its influence on resulting social cognitions.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors express deep gratitude to the anonymous reviewers and editors of the journal for their insightful comments and helpful suggestions. The authors would also like to acknowledge the valuable contribution of Mr Robert Giebitz, university of New Mexico, Albuquerque, for his editing and proofreading expertise. This article is part of the larger study “A study on co-Subject country image discourse and mechanism of global culture embeddedness from Postmodern Perspective” (Project Code: 71172121), which is supported by the National Natural Science Fund of China.
Citation
Yousaf, S. and Li, H. (2015), "Social identity, collective self esteem and country reputation: the case of Pakistan", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 24 No. 4, pp. 399-411. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-04-2014-0548
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited