Positioning countries on personality dimensions: Scale development and implications for country marketing

The main objective of the research presented in this article was to develop a scale to position countries on human traits. The scale development procedure followed the admitted sequence for the construction of psychometrically good measuring instruments. A list of human-relevant adjectives was generated from previous personality scales and individual interviews with a sample of French-speaking Canadian adults. Two empirical studies were conducted to reduce the list of adjectives and estimate the underlying personality factor structure. This resulted in the identification of six country personality dimensions which were labeled as follows: agreeableness, wickedness, snobbism, assiduousness, conformity, and unobtrusiveness. A survey was conducted among a sample of 170 French-speaking Canadians to refine the scale, assess its stability and psychometric properties, and test the adequateness of a reduced scale. Both the full (37 items) and reduced (24 items) scales were shown to have a stable structure and good psychometric properties. The article concludes with some marketing applications of the scale for positioning countries and estimating the relative impact of the personality dimensions on attitudes toward countries in general, product–country attitudes, and attitudes toward countries as travel destinations.