ALIGNING IDENTITY: THE INFLUENCE OF NATION BRANDING AND INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS ON SOCIAL IDENTITY IN THE STATE OF QATAR

Abstract

A key challenge recognized in prior literature is the lack of cohesive relationship building amongst all nation stakeholders while strategizing and implementing a nation brand. The aim of this research is to examine the impacts of nation branding strategies on the social identity of citizens within the State of Qatar. The proposed model utilizes the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) framework to analyze the external stimuli (S) of nation brand commitment, integrated marketing communications (IMC), and opinion leaders, with citizen engagement acting as the organism (O) and the response (R) of social identity. Data was collected through a bilingual (English and Arabic) online-survey, from a total number of 264 Qatari and non-Qatari citizens through the convenience sampling method, between December 2024 and February 2025. The resulting empirical data underwent in-depth analysis through structural equation modeling facilitated by AMOS22. The main statistical results supported the key independent factors, nation brand commitment, opinion leaders, and the synergy of IMC strategies on citizen engagement which in turn, significantly and strongly impacted social identity. This research bridges a gap in nation brand literature, by providing a crucial link between nation brand commitment, integrated marketing communications, opinion leadership, and social identity. Providing policymakers with insights from the internal citizen perspective, this study offers opportunities for deepening social cohesion through networks of peer influence. In extension to this research, future studies can include a mixed method approach including both quantitative data collection as well as qualitative interviews to gather deeper citizen sentiments on nation brand commitment and the drivers of citizen engagement.