Identifying Factors Affecting the Promotion of the National Brand by Emphasizing Iran's Tourist Attractions and Using the Capacities of Social Media

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Assistant Prof., Department of Educational Management, Farhangian University Campus Shahid Chamran, Tehran, Iran.

2 Prof., Department of Media Management and Business Communication, Faculty of Business Management, College of Management, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Objective
Changing the existing image and forming a new and desirable image and mentality is the essence of national branding. The national brand removes the dominant negative stereotypes and tries to replace them with a favorable image based on the capacities. The current research identifies the factors affecting the promotion of the national brand with an emphasis on Iran's tourist attractions and using the capacities of social media in this regard.
Research Methodology
The approach of the current research is inductive-deductive (qualitative and quantitative) and it is considered a qualitative and quantitative research (mixed exploratory). For this purpose, qualitative data were first collected from 2021-2022. The collection of these data led to the identification of many aspects of the phenomenon and made it possible to formulate the conceptual model of the research. Next, based on the findings from the qualitative data, a research model was created and quantitative data were collected to enable the generalization of the findings. In the qualitative part, the researchers collected the required data by conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews with 17 experts in the field of tourism and social media.
The participants in the qualitative phase of the research, to conduct the interviews, were experts who had at least 10 years of experience in Iranian tourism organizations. The interviews continued until reaching theoretical saturation. The statistical population in the quantitative part of the research was all tourists in Iran. The sample size estimation formula (Cochran's formula) was used to determine the size of the statistical sample.
Findings
In the qualitative part, causal factors include upgrading economic capacities, economic development, and environmental development. Background factors include upgrading capacities such as information, education, infrastructural, and technological; Infrastructural development is a challenge such as economic, promotional, physical and environmental development. Intervening factors include challenges such as social-cultural, political-legal and legal, managerial, and social-cultural obstacles. The strategies involve upgrading capacities such as socio-cultural, advertising, social responsibility, informing, increasing tourism knowledge and awareness, socio-cultural strategies, marketing strategies, and political-legal strategies. The consequences include the promotion of marketing capacities, and social-cultural development. Then, based on the proposed model, the effects of the model components on each other were tested, and the components showed a positive and significant effect.
Discussion & Conclusion
The factors affecting the promotion of the national brand with an emphasis on Iran's tourist attractions are widespread and macro-level factors, which are all influenced by the legal, political, economic and social fields, and therefore the use of the media's capacity. Social media can provide the basis for promoting the national brand.
Based on the results of the research, the factors affecting the promotion of the national brand by emphasizing on Iran's tourist attractions and using the capacities of social media are: the promotion of informational capacities, the promotion of educational capacities, the promotion of infrastructural capacities, Improving technological capacities, infrastructural development, economic challenges, advertising challenges, physical development challenges, environmental challenges. The results suggest that social media has become the norm for retailers seeking to actively engage with consumers. There is also growing evidence that some consumers prefer not to engage with social media marketing content and that the depth of consumer engagement varies across social media. The results show the significant effects of the media platform on interaction behaviors. This research contributes to the growing studies in the field of social media interaction, especially understanding the influence of social media contextual factors on various participation behaviors.
According to the results of the research, the effective intervention in the promotion of the national brand by emphasizing the tourist attractions of Iran and using the capacities of social media are socio-cultural challenges, political-legal and legal challenges, management challenges, Socio-cultural barriers. A message sent to a specific market or audience contains specific types of information that influence the audience. For this reason, brand identity plays an increasingly important role nowadays in digital form. Every country wants to differentiate itself from other countries by creating a strong, attractive and different brand identity thereby increasing its reputation.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

 
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Media Management Review
Volume 3, Issue 1
2024
Pages 111-133

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