The effect of cultural distance, familiarity and country image on purchase intentions

Niger is one of the western African countries that have developed relations with Turkey since the Ottoman Empire. Relations between Turkey and Niger continue in the field of culture, trade and education. Accordingly, it was decided to conduct research within the marketing discipline between the two countries. This research identifies the influence of image of Turkey on Nigerien consumers, the familiarity with Turkish products (services) and cultural proximity or distance they perceive and the intention to purchase Turkish products. It further viewed country image as a multidimensional concept comprising cognitive and affective image and as such the hypotheses were aimed at determining how each of the two dimensions affect the consumer decision making as intention to buy and intention to recommend the purchase. A quantitative research designed was used and a model was developed based on the hypotheses established for the study. It used a questionnaire survey to collect data from people living in Niger in all field. Turkish products (services) consumers were used as a case for this study. 200 questionnaires were collected online through mailing and google form technologies; and the analyses were conducted with the 156 valid questionnaire. The research data was analyzed by SPSS program 21 premium version. The results suggest that cultural positively affects image of country, cognitive and affective country image are significant predictors for purchase intention, cognitive country's image is positively related to affective one, while product (service) familiarity dimension was found to be not significant predictor for country image. In sum, the study suggests cultural distance to possibly shape the perceived image of a country and that purchase intention to be possible consequence of country image effect (through its cognitive and affective dimensions) on consumer. Keywords: Country Image, Cultural Distance, Product Familiarity, Purchase Intention