The effects of the country image on customer demans in tourist industry: Turkey case

The opinions of people, their emotions on the country and the thoughts about it, is called country image. The country should have a beter image than her competitors if she wants to be the chosen one. Unfortunately, there are common prejudices against today?s Turkey. The main reasons for these prejudices are economic and political chaos, lack of proper advertisement of the country, natural disasters, and terrorist activities. Brazil, Italy and Spain have proved to be successful examples of country brands with a powerful country image. Turkey has a problem with its image so her brand value is lower than her competitors therefore Turkish products and services and the most important case, Turkish tourism, cannot be sold at the best prices. The purpose of this study is while establishing if the country?s image influences the tourism customer demands; showing the missing parts of adverstising instruments to make a powerful country image. The datas were analysed from a survey which was asked to be filled by the people who have been / have not been to Turkey, yet to show the demands on visiting Turkey by corelation and Chi-Square tests whereas Anova Test was used to show the diversities.Keywords: country image, customer demands, foreign customer behaviours, touristic buying preferences.