Scale Selection and Use in Country Image Research

Country image is defined as the sum of descriptive, inferential and informative beliefs about a particular country. It is a research field that has been studied extensively in the international marketing literature because it affects consumers' evaluations of product quality. It can be seen that the research designs and the scales used have a great diversity in the dimensions of the country image. The transitivity observed within the scales measuring the conceptual mess and the components of the country image existing in this diversity stands in front of researchers as an important problem. In this study, firstly the conceptual framework was tried to be drawn with the definitions in order to solve the concept complexity that emerged in the country image researches. In addition, the mistakes made in the use of scales measuring the components of country-image and the product-country image, and the criticisms of them have been compiled. In the research, it is emphasized that the the conceptual framework should be drawn exactly by seperating the general country image and the product-country image from each other, and the effects of the first one on the second one are explained