Nation branding: The analysis of Serbia's brand identity

In less than a century, Serbia has changed its name several times and was part of a number of states. As a result of turbulent political and social past, the newly formed Republic of Serbia and its nation began the process of finding the nation's identity. Like other former Yugoslav countries, Serbia was faced with challenges of nation positioning, and a need to improve its image and reputation. In addition to the significantly deteriorated image, Serbia encountered perhaps a bigger problem internally - a vague, inconsistent and somewhat confused perception of Serbia's identity seen through the eyes of its nation. The aim of this paper is to gain insight into the current position of Serbia, since it has a chance for rebirth as well as separation from the legacy of the past times through the implementation of the nation branding concept. This paper deals with the understanding and analysis of nation brand identity as the starting point for Serbia brand development. Internal and external online research was conducted to determine the current perception of nation brand identity. The external survey examined the attitudes and opinions of the most important external stakeholders of Serbia, members of the business class in Italy, Austria and Slovenia. On the other hand, the internal part of the study focused on responses from members of the Serbian nation. The research was conducted over a period of three and a half years, in four countries with a total of 4,656 responses collected. By means of descriptive statistics the perception of the following brand identity elements was examined: brand personality, character, symbols, name, slogan and culture. The results indicated the existence of peculiarities in the perception of brand identity elements which can be seen in three aspects: perception discrepancy, matching perception and lack of knowledge. The greatest contribution of the paper is reflected in the fact that an insight into organized knowledge of brand in the minds of the most important internal and external stakeholders Serbia is gained for the first time.