Psychological Identifications of Branding in the Food Industry with Grounded Theory Institutions (Study case: Gaz Asari)

A strong brand differentiates the product from competitors' products, reduces search costs, minimizes perceived risks, and offers high quality from the customer's point of view. He considered that one of the most important problems of Iran's food industry is related to the brand name, especially in the field related to the internalization of awareness and association of the brand name in the customer's mind. Cognitive distortions, as psychological factors that cause perceptual errors in people, can be effective in their negative feelings and, as a result, affect the expected results of customers' behavior; Therefore, identifying the psychological components of branding in the food industry with the foundation's data approach (case study: Gaz Asari) is of great importance. The method of this research is qualitative and grounded theory method (foundation data) which has been used in this research due to some of its special features. The statistical population consists of interviews with 17 people, including all managers and expert managers in the Gaz Asari brand industry, which means analyzing the data obtained from the interviews, using the qualitative-inductive grounded theory method (including the steps of open coding, central coding, and selective coding). The results include 19 general categories in the form of a paradigm model, which include causal conditions (competitive pressure, changing customer characteristics, market uncertainty, understanding the importance of branding and lifestyle changes), central phenomenon (psychological branding), background conditions (sustainability of brand effects) flexible characteristics of the brand and branding skills, intervening conditions (customer, company capability, brand competition capacity and the challenges of Sanat Gaz administration) and strategies (differentiation strategy, modeling strategy, discovery strategy, and resistance strategy) and consequences (short consequences duration and long-term consequences).