Image of Serbia and Food Production – Measurement, Determinants and Repercussions

Abstract

Within the effects of integrated marketing communications it is possible, in addition to economic effects, to identify communication effects, which primarily relate to the image – of products, companies, but also of entire countries. It is the intensification of the activities of national branding that features as one of the approaches in the context of the efforts towards improving national competitiveness, where branding of one country is not necessarily oriented only to other countries’ auditoriums but also to the auditorium within the country itself. The aim of these activities is to increase the consumption of products from a country that implement them. However, there are authors who suggest that for the existence of preferences towards a product originating from a certain product-specific country image is more significant than the overall image of the country, while it is even possible for a negative general image of a country and positive product-specific country image to exist in parallel at a certain market. At the same time, within the model of the “hierarchy of effects” which refers to the effects of integrated marketing communications, the existence of preferences for specific product precedes the behavioral phase. Bearing all this in mind, the subject of this paper is to explore the food product-specific image of Serbia (among the domestic auditorium) related to several food categories. In addition to measuring the level of the image, the paper researches image perception in the context of socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents, as well as its impact on the frequency of consumption of domestic brands. The survey was conducted in December 2015 on a convenience sample of 100 respondents from the North and the South Bačka Districts.