The Mediating Role of Institutional Trust on Corporate Image and Customer Trust in Iraqi Banking Sector

In today’s highly volatile environment, banks strive to leverage the perceptions of their multiple customers more than ever before to build a sustainable competitive advantage. Accordingly, corporate image and customer trust concepts are of vital importance for both academicians and practitioners, concerning their potential impact on internal and external stakeholders. Recognizing the intensified significance of a multi-stakeholder perspective, the current study attempts to contribute to the literature by examining the mediating role of institutional trust on the relationship between corporate image and customer trust. The study applies the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method to examine this relationship. The data are collected from a total of 372 Iraqi banking customers using a random sampling technique. The finding for path-1 shows that there exists a positive and significant association between corporate image, institutional trust, and trust in online banking services. Similarly, the result of path-2 also reveals a positive and significant association between institutional trust and trust in online banking services. Finally, bias-corrected bootstrapping confirms that institutional trust plays a mediating role between corporate image and trust in online banking services in Iraq. This study has important theoretical and practical implications. It not only fills some of the gaps in the literature about trust in online banking services, particularly for Iraq but it also reinforces to policy-makers that institutional trust is an important factor in promoting customers’ trust in financial services