How does a Brand Reputation-Driven Construct Impact on Country Brand Equity? A Cross-National Study of Brazil and China

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Country Brand Equity (CBE) is a core topic in international business; however, it is scarcely discussed in publications. Due to their global market importance as developing nations, Brazil and China were evaluated by U.S. consumers. The purpose of our model was to measure CBE by adding a new construct – Country Brand Reputation (CBRep) – to the classic models of brand equity at a country level [Country Brand Awareness, Country Brand Perceived Quality (CBQua) and Country Brand Loyalty (CBLoy)]. Therefore, these four constructs are represented by fifty-one variables founded on preexisting scales. By applying psychometric procedures, a CBE model was constructed and validated using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The Brazilian and Chinese models indicated quite similar results. The results implied consistency regarding both countries’ CBE when measuring the Country Brand Reputation’s influence on CBE. Thus, we propose a model named the Reputation-Driven Country Brand Equity Model (CBE-Rep) designed for countries, regions or cities.