Differences on the image of Brazil in external markets according to consumers' age, gender, knowledge about the country and country of residence

A country's image could be managed to give greater value to products from that country, while making the country more attractive to investors and more desirable as a tourism destination. Considering two important gaps in the literature on country image (discrepant results on the influence of socio-demographic characteristics on the image of a country and few studies on the image of Brazil), this paper's objective is to check for differences on Brazil image according to the following consumers' characteristics: age, gender, knowledge about Brazil and country of residence. A quantitative survey was distributed to 380 respondents from four European countries: Germany, Ireland, England and France. This study concluded that beliefs about countries may differ according to the degree of perceived similarity with a given country and to certain demographic issues, and respondents that had better evaluations on Brazil's image were: young, men, with a high level of knowledge about Brazil and from France. Moreover, aspects related to communication, distribution and differentiation of Brazilian products were those that received the worst evaluation by consumers participating in the survey, which indicates the need for greater investments from both the Brazilian government and the private sector in communicating and promoting Brazilian products abroad.