The role of country of brand, country of manufacture and self-congruence in influencing Turkish automobile customers' brand personality perceptions, purchase intentions and willingness to pay price premium

Companies have gathered in huge groups by mergers and acquisitions with an increasing pace, also each firm can shift their production to various places for numerous reasons. In that sense, country of production place and brand origin could influence brand image and consumer preferences. Consumer's self-image is one of the powerful substances in their decisions, their congruence with that specific country play role in their purchase behavior as well. With rapidly increasing prices, automobile purchase decision is important for Turkish customers, also Turkey is on the edge of producing an own branded automobile, that's why this study could enlighten the Turkish customer's perception on countries' automobile brands and production places. Aim of this study is to examine the effects of country of brand and country of manufacturing on behavioral responses of Turkish customers. Over a 2 (Country of brand: Turkey vs Germany) X 2 (Country of manufacturing: Turkey vs Germany) X 2 Self-image congruence (High vs Low) text-based experiment, consumers' perceptions of car brand's personality as well as customers' purchase intention and willingness to pay price premium are measured as their behavioral responses towards different country settings. Self-congruence on country is used as moderating variable to represent how they value countries. Study is maintained by distributing online questionnaires to 340 participants from various cities of Turkey. After completing factor and reliability analysis, MANOVA is used to test the hypotheses. According to the results of the study, all dependent variables; brand personality; purchase intention and willingness to pay price premium have been significantly affected by country of brand and country of manufacturing, while country of brand is slightly more influential than manufacturing. However, moderating effect of self-congruence is rather limited.