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[Miss obstinacy]

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5.2 Discussion
The first objective is to determine the positive and negative qualities of people from Kazakhstan from their perception and compare it with foreigners’ points of view. People and their culture are one of the main component of nation branding, moreover these components closely linked with other elements. Like any other brand (product, service, corporate, celebrity etc.) each nation has its own identity and personality. According to Anholt Simon (2000) “Only a few countries have a clear, consistent and universally understood brand images, and most of them are European”. As an instance, England has their heritage and class, Italy – style and sexiness, France – quality living and chic, Germany – quality and reliability. Besides the positive qualities inherent in every nation there are negative qualities, which must be objectively evaluated, recognized and corrected if possible. According to Ying Fan (2009), if a nation willing to change its image, it has to change behaviour firstly. “…equally important, it needs to tell the people in the world after the changes in reality.”
Both group of respondents expressed the same point of view about following nation qualities such as, lazy, not disciplined, boastfulness, machismo, on the other hand hospitality, friendliness, and well educated, beautiful women. In the following qualities emerged some inconsistencies, for example respondents who believe that the patriotism is good for a nation, simultaneously these respondents said Kazakh has too much patriotic feelings. Despite this, nation has high communication skills and can easily build up relations with other, some respondents identified close community, especially in abroad. However, before analysing given response by foreigners, it needs to look through background of respondents and their own culture context and values. As an instance, respondents from Holland, Russia and the USA believe that respect eldest by younger generation is a positive attribute of culture, whereas respondents from China, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Turkey does not mentioned this, because they have to respect elder people and it is tradition of their culture. Additionally, respondent from Holland highlighted that Kazakhs say to person what he wants to hear; Italian called Kazakh friendship ‘fake friendship’, while Chinese respondent believe that Kazakhs are loyal to their society, honest in love and relationships.
As was pointed out by Anholt Simon (2000), ‘culture is central to and indivisible from nation branding’. In most cases, foreign respondents appreciate the culture of national traditions and customs of the Kazakhs. In other words those things that is different from their own culture. Following things were mentioned: traditional food (horse meat) and nomadic traditions, national music (dombra sound) (Argentina); the tradition of counting the ancestors up to the ‘seventh knee’, a ban on marriage to relatives from father’s side to seven generation (nation health), close family relations (Holland, Russia, USA); patriotic spirit (Moldova). On the contrary, respondents mentioned that they do not like: animal sacrifices (USA); men dominance (India, Italy, China); cult of personality (Moldova), conservative way of thinking (Holland).
Next, Islam as the majority religion has not significant impact on lifestyle and behaviour of the nation, but it is part of the culture of ethnic Muslims. Among young generation is a tendency to strengthen Islam. The Russian is the most common functioning language in Kazakhstan. 100% of respondents speak and 98% think in that language. It has status the official language. While the role of Kazakh language stands in priorities of respondents and operates as a ‘family language’. Attitude toward English refers as ‘business language’.
Values and attitudes based on theories
Cultural dimensions of Hofstede’s theory widely used at the level of cultural identification by organisations, leadership, products, brands and personalities. As part of exploratory and descriptive research through five cultural dimensions were identified values and attitudes in Kazakhstan. Since it was revealed that Kazakhs are collectivists, who prefer standardisation and formalisation conditions (uncertainty avoidance), focused on achieving goal and material values, however it depends on geographical location and generation respectively. Therefore, researchers carried out quantitative research in order to prove or disprove four hypotheses based on the results of exploratory research.
First hypothesis showed the differences in values and attitudes between the Soviet Union and Independent Kazakhstan generations. Young generation mostly follow religion, while the Soviet Union generation brought up atheism by Soviet ideology. Unlike young generation in transition from individualism to collectivism, the Soviet Union generation most individualists. Such a contradictory situation by assumption of researchers due to the majority of respondent in age of 31 or older experienced ‘perestroika’ period, where values and stereotypes of communistic system suddenly collapsed and covered by new capitalistic time. Thus, young generation today follow the influence of Western educational system (as teambuilding, group work), management system and as the result slowly turning to collectivism (Temnitskii, 1998). Additionally, both of group actually just recognizes a power distance, but in reality disagree and do not accept power distance. That is to say, the society has a tendency to hidden power respect (Hofstede, 1994). Undoubtedly, the society has short term orientation, that in turn means a respect for culture and traditions, respond gift to gift, service to service.
Second hypothesis rejects the difference in values and attitudes between people who speak and think in different languages, namely Kazakh and Russian language. A long time Russian language uses side by side with Kazakh, hence flexibility of language use shows no difference in thinking way.
Third hypothesis found out a significant variance in values and attitudes of two main ethnic groups: Kazakh and Russian (majority by percentage 68% and 19%). For example, according to Hall’s theory, Kazakh nation in high context (51.7%) by factor ‘flexibility if time’, whereas Russian in low context (32.3%). However, both nations have similarities, as an instance low context in ‘cohesion and separation of groups’, high context in ‘locus of control and attribution for failure’.
Fourth hypothesis proved differences between people who in different part of Kazakhstan. Indeed, East (71.4%) and North (55.6%) part of Kazakhstan most future orientated, whereas Astana and Almaty less orientated. Future orientated regions are more economically weak that is why place value on the future is high. That is to say, they are willing to seek new ways to replace old. More submissive regions are East (85.7%) and West (85.7%), North (83.3%) and Almaty (82.4%). There is little difference between Astana (73.9%) and Central part (75%)– this can be explained by geographical aspect - they are closely to each other. The less submissive is South – only 62.5% - this region of Kazakhstan has a strong and a powerful national identity of Kazakh. Most‘activity orientation’ is Astana (64.1%) – the capital of the Kazakhstan. Almaty (43.2%), East (42.2%), South (50%) are less active and percentage ratio by activity in the North - 33.3%, Central-25%, West-35.7% are not high. In other words, in general culture in Kazakhstan is passive orientated. Passive culture characterized by spontaneity of action. A person in such cultures can be quite long sit idle, but at the last moment to engage all its forces to perform a specific task (Avseenko, 2004).
By the research results Kazakh culture of Nature of human nature orientated to “evil/ mutable”- born evil, but can learn to be good. However, danger of regression always presents (www.ivythesis.typepad.com). More changeable is Central (75%), North (72.2%) and South (62.5%), as was identified these parts are more orientated to the future. Almaty (56.8%), Astana (56.5%) and West (57.1%) and East (42.9%) are less changeable.