Managing nations as brand entities; a focus on Kenya in relation to India

Abstract

World Book Dictionary defines “Nation’ as a ‘sovereign state’ or ‘group of people, race or tribe having the same descent, language and origin.’ As of May 2008, United Nations had 192 Members excluding Vatican. Today, all these countries are struggling to position themselves as favorable destinations both for tourists and investors. For that they have to be packaged as ‘brands’ in the competitive global market arena. Although the concept of branding has existed since the early 18th century1 , this has been majorly employed in the commercial world. According to Pickton and Broderick (2001) branding is a strategy to differentiate products and companies and to build economic value for both the consumer and the brand owner. In this context, branding can be defined as a marketing process of designing and executing a name, term, design, symbol, or any other features that identify the country and its offers from those of other countries. A nation as a brand is a combination of quality of its products, attractiveness of its culture, its tourism, opportunities for investment, its economic, and political and foreign policies. It is also said to be a country’s identity that has been proactively distilled, interpreted, internalized and projected internationally in order to gain international recognition and to construct a favorable national image. A country brand strategy therefore is a plan for defining the most realistic, most competitive and most compelling strategic vision for a country (Akotia, 2010). This paper reviews the various approaches employed by the two nations – Kenya and India in positioning themselves in the global perspective. A typology of the two brands is developed and suggestions on way forward are presented