Ülke, Ürün ve Lider İmajı Ekseninde Türk Vatandaşlarının Rusya ve ABD Algısı: Karşılaştırmalı Bir Saha Çalışması

Nation branding, a subject of research attracting the interest of different disciplines such as communication, marketing and political science, emerges as an important component in the management of increasing competition in the global sense. It is extremely important for countries to use their moral and material elements effectively and correctly to position themselves as commercial brands. Just as trademarks, countries should have colors, textures, slogans, visions, and more vitally, a story that distinguishes them from their competitors. Under the conditions of global competition, it is critical for countries to attract more visitors in order to ensure that their products are favored over others, attract investments, and become a center of attraction for trained and qualified labor force. In this sense, the main issue is how a country is viewed from the outside, in other words, how it is perceived This study, which examined how Russia and the USA were perceived by Turkish citizens, aimed to examine country, leader, and product images of the two countries, both separately and comparatively, with which Türkiye had important relations and which had a high global impact. Turkish citizens, on the other hand, were classified in the study based on their level of political interest. Then, the country, leader, and product images were analyzed in terms of these levels. While it was aimed to reveal the current situation through the results to be obtained from the study, it was considered that these results were important in terms of guiding Türkiye's branding activities, even partially. In the study, which used a cross-sectional survey model based on the quantitative research method, the data were collected from 461 participants reached through purposive sampling method. The participants with high level of political interest had higher positive perceptions of country, product, and leader images for both countries compared to those with low and medium level of political interest. On the other hand, when the two leaders are compared, it is seen that US President Joe Biden has a more negative perception than Russian leader Putin. Although the participants found Putin relatively experienced and charismatic, the findings show that the words of both leaders are unreliable, indicating that the participants perceive leaders as insincere and rude.