A Country's Brand and Image: a Socio-Cultural Projection of the Relationship of Concepts

The purpose of the article is to identify common and distinctive features between the concepts of “image” and “brand” of a country based on the justification of socio-cultural markers of their positioning. The research is based on a general scientific interdisciplinary methodology that builds on the fundamental principles of imageology, cultural studies, sociology, management and other sciences. General scientific methods of analysis, synthesis, generalisation, comparison, etc. are used based on the principles of objectivity and reliability of the presented results. Scientific novelty. The main grounds for reorienting research on a country’s image and brand in the direction of socio-cultural methodology are outlined. This will significantly expand the boundaries of scientific research and argumentation of conclusions about their characteristics, functions, meaning, as well as branding tools and mechanisms. Conclusions. Therefore, such ambiguous phenomena as “country brand” and “country image” need to be considered from different points of view, relying on interdisciplinary pragmatisation in order to form a balanced concept of their understanding, since in fact they characterise one phenomenon — the perception of a country. The perception of the country is the result of the influence of a number of primarily subjective socio-psychological factors (cognitions, opportunities for individual cognition, emotions and patterns of human behaviour), which in turn are mediated by factors of the objective political, economic, socio-cultural, etc. landscape. This approach indicates the need to determine the main directions of implicational changes in the primary positions of imageology and branding of a country based on an anthropo-oriented socio-cultural methodology. An important factor in the formation of the image and brand of Ukraine should be the understanding of cultural policy as one of the integral components of foreign policy.