National Identity and the Consumer

National identity is a group or an individuals collective characteristics by which they are known and recognise themselves with respect to the country they follow in or have other ties with. More specifically, belles-lettres often refers to patriotism and patriotism attitudes. Patriotism can be defined as ones love of his country (Berns, 1997). Nationalism, on the other hand, is the exalting of ones country and its culture above all others. The engagement between the two terms can be wondrous by an individual who is very patriotic (loves ones country) yet possesses weaker nationalism (does not glorify his country above other countries).

Current belles-lettres has accounted for countries where citizens are presented with two different national identities, for their state and for their nation. For these countries, lit has proposed that there exists a continuum representing a citizens national identity spot (Billiet et al, 2003). On one end of this continuum are citizens who exclusively when site with their national entity (eg. Australia) and on the other end are citizens who exclusively identify with their subnational entity (eg. Queensland). The continuum representing Australians is illustrated below in Figure 1.

Identification with Australia (nation)         | ------------------------------------------------------------|         Identification with Queensland (subnation)

Figure 1: The national identity continuum.

Those who identify with both national entities, Australia and Queensland, are located somewhere in the middle of the continuum. These citizens can be described as having a multiple national identity. Billiet et al (2003), in a study of Belgium, found that the continuum not only measured direction of national identity, but also warmth of national identity. Citizens located on either extremes of the continuum had high patriotism for their nation or subnation, whereas citizens in the middle had weak denomination with both, their nation and subnation. The research further found that the patriots tended to hold more...

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