International Product Differentiation Through a Country Brand.pdf

International Product Differentiation Through a Country Brand: An Economic Analysis of National Branding as a Marketing Strategy for Agricultural Products CATPRN Commissioned Paper CP 2007-05 November 2007 Brian G. Innes M.Sc. Candidate William A. Kerr Van Vliet Professor Jill E. Hobbs Professor and Head Department of Bioresource Policy, Business Economics University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada Funding for this project was provided by the Canadian Agricultural Trade Policy Research Network (CATPRN). The CATPRN is funded by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada but the views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the funding agency. 1.0 Introduction Trade policy initiatives of developed country governments are in flux. Governments’ need for new trade policy measures has arisen partly because of constraints imposed on the use of export subsidies by the Agreement on Agriculture reached as part of the Uruguay Round of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1994 (Gaisford and Kerr, 2001). Further disciplines on export subsidies and other policy measures may be agreed on in the Doha Round of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations (Rude and Meilke, 2006), accentuating the need for new policy measures. While the Doha Round may not successfully reach an agreement, the current modalities show provisional agreement on the elimination of multiple forms of export subsidies. There is provisional agreement on more