The purpose of this research is to identify factors and components that affect a trust-based cooperation in the automobile supply chain and their impact on the performance of the supply chain companies. This paper includes 2 parts. In the first part, by studying the research history and literature and interviewing academic and industrial scholars and experts, four hidden variables of trust-based cooperation in automobile industry were identified and the basic research model was designed. In the second part, using Structural Equation verification and path analysis, the impact of these variables on trust-based cooperation and the impact of trust-based cooperation on the performance of the supply chain companies were studied. Research population consisted of Iran-Khodro and Saipa’s supply chain companies including part makers, major car manufacturers and distributors. Data gathering method was questionnaires that were given to 400 companies –one questionnaire per company- 196 of which were returned and analyzed. In this phase, first, by confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis, validity and stability of the indexes that were derived from the model in the first phase, were tested, all of which were confirmed. Four hypotheses were developed based on the conceptual model of the research and tested by path analysis. According to the findings, 3 of the hypotheses were confirmed and one was rejected. Based on the results of the research, some suggestions were presented for improving the performance of companies in the automobile supply chain and for future researches. .
