The value of Country Reputation in Emerging Countries. A survey on Turkish Consumers

INTRODUCTION There is no better way to absorb a foreign culture than the one of living in that country and to integrate with its inhabitants. In fact, the experience of going to Turkey has given a big contribution to this research, since it has well permitted to collect more information than they would have been collected by staying in the own country. This empirical research has had the purpose of investigating the Country Reputation phenomenon by analysing the perception of Turks towards the countries of Italy, Spain and Finland. The decision of considering Turkey as the subject of the analysis is due to the fact that it appears in all the emerging markets in current global economy, because of the extremely dynamic growth it is having. By adding this to the very different culture it has if compared to the other three countries analysed, the value of the obtained results becomes even higher. In any kind of relationship, reputation and thus the image of a certain partner play a considerable role in determining whether such connection will be realized or not. If the first impression has the strongest impact in a relationship, reputation determines the effective link among the subjects, because it acts before than the connection starts. This is one of the reasons which has encouraged to further analyse this phenomenon. Another one has been the change in international market structure, where they are currently emerging new economies in such a way that none of the developed countries can be compared. As International Marketing study, then it cannot be unconsidered the Country Reputation as an extremely important asset, in all the possible configurations, as a stronghold on which the whole marketing strategies must be implemented. Indeed, according to the previous researches, either the decision of purchasing foreign products, or selecting a specific country as touristic destination, is influenced by the constructed opinion towards that nation. Hence, the strategy of building collaboration with a foreign partner, rather than the one of making a foreign direct investment, must consider such factor to do not fall into a negative situation. Obviously, stereotypes are also determined by the own culture, since it acts as a reading lens which permits to give a shape to other countries’ cultures. This affects the results and it explains why the general opinion about a monitored country can change when considering different nations as observers. Politicians, but even each person who leaves in it, can contribute to improve or damage the overall Country Reputation, thus they are all responsible for the overall image. Under this assumption, it has been built up a model which aims to investigate eight different hypotheses. From the two classical approaches, which relate the image