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Research Among Consumers In Denmark & Sweden

Among projects conducted by NETIÐ, marketing and business consultancy, is a research about "The image of Iceland and Icelandic products and services abroad". A part of the research was an interview with 600 consumers in Denmark and Sweden in 1997.

Following are the results of 2 questions, concerning Reykjavik as a tourist destination and what is the first that comes the respondents mind when Iceland is mentioned.

Iceland as a Destination and the Image of Iceland

The Icelandic tourist authorities are keen on marketing Reykjavík as an interesting choice for tourists as a weekend city, especially in the off season. Reykjavík gets third rank from both nationalities when respondents have to choose between a weekend trip to five cities, but almost as many Swedes choose Milan, London and Reykjavík, while the Danes are more interested in Milan.

This good result for Reykjavík can partly be explained by the fact that it is more expensive for the respondents to go to Reykjavík (and Milan) than the other cities. Therefore the economic rationality might urge respondents to make that choice because they might not otherwise afford it as well as London or Dublin, for example. It is also likely that comparatively most of the respondents have been to London before.

A cross-tabulation between the D questions and all the cities did not show a statistically significant difference. However, more women than men chose Reykjavík or 25.3% vs. 20.9%. Also, 30.5% of the men chose London but only 22.5% of the women. A comparison with education revealed that London was most popular among those with short education and Milan was least popular among those with short education. It should though be stressed once again that only 37 were in the category "short education".

The Image of Iceland

The respondents could choose 1-3 items here and most respondents gave 2 or 3 answers. The Danes gave on the average 2.33 answers and the Swedes 2.28. The total ratings from each nation are therefore 233% from the Danes and 228% from the Swedes. The figure shows the total ratings of first in mind, second in mind etc. divided into categories by nationalities, i.e. by how many percent of the respondents each category was mentioned.

1. Warm springs and Geyser.
2. Nature, nice nature, great nature etc.
4. Horses, nice horses, nice ponies, Iceland horses etc.
5. Fish, fishing.
6. Cold, snow, rain, windy etc.
8. Sparsely populated, few people live there, wilderness, no trees.
10. Sagas, Vikings, Viking time etc.

Table 1.1 The six most frequent categories

18% of the Danes and 14% of the Swedes said Geyser which is under the category warm springs (D: varme kilder, S: varma källor), which was the biggest for both nationalities as first in mind, along with nature for the Danes. The nature is obviously the main image of Iceland, but it is interesting that the third biggest category for the Swedes is the Icelandic horse mentioned by almost a quarter of them. It shows that the Icelandic horse is a great country promotion in Sweden. It is, however, only the 6th biggest category for the Danes. Most of those who said fish did not give a further description but a few, mainly Danes, said shrimps, whales or salmon. 10% of the Danes and 11% of the Swedes said cold in the weather category, which has to be categorized as a rather negative image for Iceland.

The eighth biggest category population can be seen as the category that contained the widest views, e.g. "sparsely populated", "a few people live there", "wasteland", "desolated", "lot of space", "dimensions", "no trees" etc. Many of those comments can be seen as rather negative.

The pop singer Björk was mentioned by almost half of those in the "some people" category. Comparatively more young people and more Swedes mentioned her. The category "other answers" contained various answers that were mentioned by 22% of the Danes and 26% of the Swedes. Those answers did not fit into one of the thirteen categories on the figure but are listed in the Appendix. Those answers received 10 ratings or less from each nation. The most common are "water", "Reykjavík", "culture", "the (fresh) air", "an island" and 7 Swedes mentioned Icelandic alcohol (the Black death) and same number said "mystic". The answer "mystic" is in line with the exotic image that Iceland has among many Swedes (see Section 5.2.1). The other answers are quite different and most are only mentioned by one respondent.

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