Abstract

Purpose of this article is to detect convergences and divergences between sources of brand value in context of socio-cultural profile of customers on the national basis. The reason is that with the acceleration of globalization, which economic aspects are a logical consequence of the increasingly deepening degree of interdependence of individual national economies at the end of the second half of the 20th century, grows the importance of building and managing the brand value as a source of competitive advantage of companies involved in business activities both on international and national markets. These markets are currently from the trend point of view consistently characterized by the increasing level of competition in the distribution of consumer goods, the decline in the number of competing companies firms while increase in the number of brands, a significant reduction of life cycles of both products and businesses, the information revolution caused by digital technologies, the sharp increase in the amount of modifications of products, the strong fragmentation of markets and also media fragmentation that reduces the effectiveness of the implemented communication strategies. Nowadays, when market environment is more and more globalized, brand value building and managing is a significant challenge for managers. The problem is not only in the choice of appropriate metrics of brand value quantification but also in the choice of appropriate branding strategies. The reason is the existence of many theoretical approaches to this issue and also the existence of many differences between them. Given divergences of domestic and foreign literature, in the context of brand management, are caused by the unsatisfactory level of research in this area. In Slovak research activities, prospectively ending to the profiling of prevenient theory, the purpose of brand as a separate subject of examination virtually absents. This state is then reflected also at the application level, with the result that there is discrimination of brands of Slovak businesses on national and international markets and reduction of interest of foreign brands to enter the Slovak market. Based on existing differences in theory, practice and local environment, managers often choose inappropriate branding pattern what cases decline in brand value. Moreover, practice has shown that inappropriate branding pattern can be also branding pattern which was previously very appropriate on other market or for other brand. By application of cluster analysis in OECD´ countries, in the context of Hofstede model of social dimensions, we found that the cause of this phenomenon is the significance of the impact of the national socio-cultural profile of consumers in the scope of their subjective perception of the brand value. We decided to provide case study on the example of Slovak republic where it has been confirmed that customers perceive as more valuable those brands, which social-cultural profile of the country of origin is convergent with the national. Subsequently, we identified individual attributes of the socio-cultural profile with the sources of individually perceived the brand value. We concluded that in the conditions of Slovak Republic exist these relevant attributes of Hofstede model of social dimensions when brand value building and managing is discussed: long term orientation, masculinity, power distance and indolence. Thanks to the converting mentioned attributes on specific source of the brand value, we state that from the point of view of Slovak consumers the key sources of the brand value are these: time commitment, social visibility, price and technical complexity. We consider these findings are key from the view of future effective existence of brands on Slovak market with implications for international effect of brands. We also believe, they create a platform for future direction of research in the area of impact of national specifics to creating new ways of building and managing the brand value in a globalized market environment. 

Keywords: brand, branding, brand value, consumer national profile, Hofstede cultural dimensions, Slovak Republic, OECD countries

JEL Classification: F18, F23, M31, Z13.

Cite as: Kliestikova J. & Janoskova, K. (2017). Branding with understanding: how national profile of consumer influences brand value perception. Marketing and Management of Innovations, 3, 149-157. https://doi.org/10.21272/mmi.2017.3-14

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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