(16 July 2015) – Reputation Institute, a Danish-American consultancy, has just published its ‘2015 Country RepTrak’, an online study of the reputation of 55 countries. The winner is Canada. 13 EU member states are in the top 20.
The study measures the reputation of 55 countries based on levels of trust, esteem, admiration and respect based on an online panel of more than 27,000 people representing the G8 countries. The study measures a country’s perceptions exploring 16 attributes that include it being viewed as: a safe place to visit, a beautiful country, having friendly and welcoming residents, having progressive social and economic policies, being run by an effective government, and more.
According to the Reputation Institute, country reputations can be measured in a similar way to those of people or companies. Three main dimensions explain a country’s reputation: quality of life (appealing environment), quality of its institutions (effective government), level of development (advanced economy). Countries with a strong reputation are positively perceived in all three dimensions. Canada is perceived as the top country in quality of life. Sweden is perceived as the top country in terms of the quality of its institutions. Japan is perceived as the country with a higher level of development.
Reputation has a strong impact on the supportive behaviours of stakeholders that improve a country’s economy: tourist arrivals, foreign direct investment, exports, etc. Canada takes first place in the ranking, recovering the leadership it had between 2011 and 2013. Canada, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and Australia are the best perceived countries among the population of the most relevant economies of the world. Latin American countries still maintain a growth path (average +3.1%), headed by Colombia. On the other hand, Brazil’s reputation fell (-2.4%) as a consequence of institutional and economic crisis. Asian countries keep improving their reputations, led by Iran (10.8%), although still at very low levels. India and China have relevant increases in 2015 (+7.4% and +7.9%, respectively).
European countries are changing trends: Germany’s reputation starts to erode (-1.3%), while Spain (+6.1%), Portugal (6.1%), Italy (+5.4%) and Ireland (+5.2%) improved their reputations after their economic indicators started to improve. Russia’s reputation shows a negative trend, damaged by the Ukrainian crisis and Crimea’s annexation. USA’s reputation seems to have stabilized after the positive trend under the Obama administration.