THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF COUNTRY IMAGE: A QUALITATIVE APPROACH

Although country of origin studies go back to 1960’s, there is still no consensus on the conceptualization and measurement of country image. Country image has been studied from a cognitive dominant perspective and most of the scales measuring this construct has failed to capture affective aspects of it. This study intents to provide a more accurate conceptual framework for the country image construct and provide some insights into the measurement of this concept for future studies. In this study, it is identified that country image consists of cognitive and affective elements in which fifteen sub-dimensions of this concept have been reached. It is determined that cognitive oriented development of the literature causes a major threat to the validity of the studies because studies have mostly applied cognitive dominant perspectives/scales and attributed the results to general country image. As a result of this study, new definition of country image is proposed, and it is thought that this concept has been placed on a more concrete and valid theoretical ground. As a result of the content analysis of the qualitative data and literature review, an item pool composed of 85 items were proposed. Future studies with an intention to measure country image with its cognitive and affective aspects can benefit the findings of this study.