Effects of social media usage on country image and purchase intention from social P2P network perspective

Country image has been regarded as the source of competitiveness of a country in the age of globalization. The purpose of this study is to examine what impact does the utilization of social media has on country image, and the relationship between social media usage and the images of a country’s economy, politics, nationality, culture and the country itself; and to examine the impacts of country image on products image and purchase intention. We conducted our analysis in two aspects of social media utilization-usage volume and usage diversity. The comparison of the Korean and Chinese social media users would enrich the insight into the relationship between the various variables developed from a different perspective. In addition, we try to reveal the relationships from a social p2p network perspective that would also provide new insights into the effects between these variables. The results show that, unlike Koreans, Chinese users are significantly related with the social media usage levels. This could be due to various differences that exist between these two countries, such as the state systems, country size, economic development status, culture, etc.