Investigating the Effect of Institutional Place Branding Strategies on Place Branding Performance with the Mediating Role of Interfirm Trust and the Moderating Role of Cultural-Cognitive Factors

Place brand distinguishes a city, region or country from its competitors. From a long time ago, the place of production of a product was mixed with the concept of quality as we are well acquainted with Indian spices, Kermani cumin and the Khuzestan dates. But now, it has become an important part of regional developments as successful and professional marketing strategy for introduction of consumer goods specifically agricultural and horticultural ones. A place brand is a collection of unique associations with that very place, that these images can greatly influence consumer decision-making and evaluation. This study investigates the effect of institutional place branding strategies (derived from Scott's institutional theory) on place branding performance with the mediating role of interfirm trust and the moderating role of cultural-cognitive factors in export companies of Khuzestan province agricultural and horticultural products.

This research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-survey in terms of data collection. The statistical society included active companies in the field of export of agricultural and horticultural products of Khuzestan Province, among which 88 companies were selected as sample using Cochran method. In this study, a questionnaire was distributed by simple random sampling. The software packages used in this research were SPSS and Smart PLS.

The findings revealed that according to Scott's institutional theory, institutional place branding strategies include three aspects: regulatory or legislative, normative, and cultural-cognitive, each of which had positive and significant effect on interfirm trust, and through this interfirm trust, on the place branding performance in the studied area companies. The mediating role of interfirm trust is verified in this study, and the hypothesis No. 6 regarding the moderating role of cultural-cognitive factors in the relationship between legislative institutions and interfirm trust, has been rejected.