Impact of Corporate Reputation on Brand Differentiation: An Empirical Study from Iranian Pharmaceutical Companies

The influence of company reputation or what is often referred to as corporate reputation on branding strategy and producing intangible asset for different industries has been researched in western countries, but there is a gap for the generalizability of findings to countries out of the United State and Europe. To establish the western researcher's external validity of theories in other countries and to obtain a better understanding of the influences of branding and company reputation on pharmaceutical business markets, the researchers applied this study for Iran, a country in the Middle East. The obtained results using SEM (by P.L.S. 2.0 software) showed a good relationship between value creation and brand differentiation (β =0.360 and t-value = 3.167), between corporate communication and brand differentiation (β = 0.022 and t-value = 3.668), and between strategic resources and brand differentiation (β = 0.289 and t-value = 2.247). This study is a pioneering attempt in Iran to measure the impact of corporate reputation on brand differentiation strategy.