Building Korea’s Brand Personality and Equity with the Olympic Brand and the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics

Jeeyoon Jamie Kim (SPM) PI
2017-2018 Falk Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Seed Grant Award

Countries host the Olympics with expectations to improve the country’s brand through the games. The 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics is no exception, expecting $10.5 billion worth country brand improvement effect that leads to $39.8 billion worth of increase in Korean product sales and tourist visit (HRI, 2011). However, such optimistic expectation on branding effects is often criticized as ‘unreliable’, ‘romanticized’, and ‘unrealized’. Key criticisms lie on (1) lack of management on ‘desired’ brand association, (2) ineffective utilization of the Olympic brand, and (3) measurement issues in assessing Olympics-caused branding effects (with externalities controlled). Such criticisms can be each addressed by applying the concepts/methods of PM (Psychological Meaning) -based brand personality, co-branding, and congruency analysis.

Thus, a research will take place to (1) understand the brand personality of Korea that the PyeongChang Organizing Committee for Olympic Games (“POCOG”) is aiming to build through the 2018 Winter Olympics, and (2) assess whether Korea’s brand personality and equity have changed as desired after the 2018 games. The project will be conducted in two phases. First, a semi-structured interview and PM based survey will be carried out with POCOG managers, to learn and develop a scale to measure the brand personality that POCOG aims to build for Korea. Second, a survey-based study will assess how the brand personality and equity of Korea changes over the 2018 games, among the general public of China and United States. Pre-post games data on perceived brand personality and brand equity of Korea will be compared through multi-group SEM with mean structure. The transfer of Olympic brand to Korea’s brand through the 2018 games and moderating factors (e.g., brand familiarity, market type, sport involvement) in the transfer will be evaluated, with congruency analysis and latent moderated SEM.