Research On Upgrading Paths Of Regional Public Brand Value Of Agricultural Products

Building regional public brands of agricultural products is a crucial strategy for advancing rural industries,consolidating poverty alleviation achievements,and modernizing agriculture.However,the growth of different brands is uneven,and brand value varies widely.Hence,increasing the regional public brand value of agricultural products is an urgent problem that needs to be addressed.The regional public brand value of agricultural products is determined by the region’s resource elements and the stakeholders’ capacity to utilize them.Existing literature either focuses on particular cases or regions,analyzes the current situation and existing problems of brand construction,and proposes a development path based on it,or focuses on studying the net effects of single or multiple factors on the performance of regional public brands of agricultural products,with insufficient research effort invested in examining the driving mechanism of regional public brand value holistically.To fill this gap,this study investigates the underlying mechanism of factors affecting the regional public brand value of agricultural products from a configuration perspective.There are complex interactive relationships among the factors that affect the market value of regional public brands of agricultural products.Therefore,this study combines competitive advantage theory,industrial cluster theory,and stakeholder theory,and uses the Porter Diamond model as the analytical framework to identify six factors that affect the market value of regional public brands of agricultural products from the perspectives of resource elements and construction subjects.On this basis,starting from a configurational perspective,a theoretical model is constructed with brand value as the outcome variable,production factors,demand conditions,support industries,rural e-commerce four resource elements,and leading enterprises,government support as the antecedent conditions of the construction subject.To clarify the interaction mechanism between the government and leading enterprises and reveal the inherent mechanism of realizing the regional public brand value of agricultural products,the study takes 88 county-level fruit brands as sample cases and employs fsQCA3.0 to analyze the necessary conditions and conditional configuration.The research findings show that there is no necessary condition for the high or non-high regional public brand value of agricultural products,however,leading enterprises play a more universal role in generating high value.The upgrading paths of the regional public brand value of agricultural products are multi-causal and concurrent.The leading enterprise-driven based on factors-demand,leading enterprise-driven based on support-demand,purely leading enterprise-driven,leading enterprise-driven based on factors,government-driven based on factors-industry,and government-leading enterprise-driven based on industry are the 6 configurations that can lead to high brand value.On the other hand,4 configurations can result in non-high brand value,which demonstrates an asymmetric relationship.Furthermore,whereas highly developed production factors and strong government support have a substitutive impact on achieving high brand value,imperfect rural e-commerce and weak market demand have a substitutive effect in leading to non-high brand value.This study reveals the complex mechanism of action between resource elements and main stakeholders,deepens the overall and systematic understanding of the construction of regional public brands of agricultural products.Not only does it introduce new research perspectives and methods,but it also enriches the relevant theoretical content of regional public brand value of agricultural products research through causal asymmetry analysis and attention to county-level brands.The research conclusions can also provide reference and inspiration for local governments to compare similar paths with targeted element enhancement.