• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.19-32
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• 2019

Purpose - This paper aims to investigate the mediating effects of relationship fairness factors between franchisor's support services and performance(re-contract intention) in food service franchise. More specifically, fairness was measured into distributive, procedure, interaction, and information, franchisor's support service was divided into pre-start support services (initial support services) and post-start support services (continued support services), and performance (re-contract intent) was measured using 3 items such as re-contract, contract extension, and recommendation. Research design, data, and methodology - The population for the survey is the head of franchises in the metropolitan area (Seoul/Gyeonggi), which operates a restaurant franchise, and samples included a wide range of overseas/domestic brands and regions. The survey was conducted from August 1 to September 30, 2018 through the survey agency. The survey was conducted together with a telephone interview and a direct visit by the investigator. A total of 205 questionnaires were collected and retrieved, 4 questionaires containing missing information were excluded and 201 responses were used for analysis. Results - The results shows that franchisor's initial support services have significant positive effects on procedural, interpersonal, and informational relationship fairness, and continuous support services have significant positive effects on distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational relationship fairness. This study also shows that informational and procedural fairness have significant positive effects on performance(re-contract intention). Finally, continuous services a significant positive effect on performance(re-contract intention). Conclusions - The results show that franchisor make a manual, and should improve fairness through regular investigation whether support services was executed as promised in the manual after franchisee operation. In addition, information fairness and procedural fairness have been shown to increase performance(re-contract intention). These results mean that the franchisor's headquarters should provide product and service support for the merchant in accordance with the manual and management policy to reduce asymmetry in information and improve procedural fairness to enhance performance(re-contract intention).

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.7-18
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• 2019

Purpose: This study identifies the relative importance of the sub - factors of initial services and continuous services using AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) method, and calculates the competitive index for the detailed factors. The purpose of this paper is to propose the establishment of long - term and short - term management strategy for expansion of business of food service franchise, franchisors, long - term and win - win relationship with franchisees, and rationalization of operating system. Research design, data, and methodology: The population for the survey is 92 franchisees in 46 foreign brands and 46 domestic brands in the Seoul metropolitan area (Seoul / Gyeonggi / Incheon). The survey was conducted from July 1 to August 31, 2018 through the survey agency with a telephone interview and a surveyor's direct visit. A total of 100 questionnaires were collected, but a total of 92 parts were used for analysis except 8 parts that were considered to contain false information. Using the AHP method, relative importance and competitiveness index were calculated for the details of initial services and continuous services. Results: The results shows continuous services were significantly higher for both foreign brand franchises, domestic brand franchises, and overall than initial services, This suggests that the continuous services of the affiliated franchisors has a higher relative importance than the initial services. Among the continuous services, brand reinforcement and promotion were significantly higher for both foreign brand merchants and domestic brand franchises. This can be regarded as the most important factor in brand reinforcement and promotion when selecting a food service franchisors. Conclusions: In the Standard Terms and Conditions governed by the Fair Trade Commission, the franchisors should increase the fairness by creating manuals for supporting services, especially after opening, and regularly checking whether the supporting services have been carried out like manuals since the establishment of franchisees. In addition, the Brand Strengthening and Public Relations Committee (tentative name) jointly participated by the franchisors and franchisees for the purpose of strengthening and promoting the brand, suggesting a system for transparent and efficient execution of the brand reinforcement and promotion budget and monitoring afterwards.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.5-14
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• 2009

This study explores the relationships among franchisor's leadership style, franchisee's revenue, and commitment The main purpose of this study is when the causal relationship between leadership style and revenue to determine the mediating effect of commitment and when causal relationship between leadership style and commitment to determine the moderating effect of motivation. The results of the study show that franchisor's leadership styles are significantly related to franchisee's revenue. Although all leadership styles exhibit significant relationships with franchisee's revenue, only achievement oriented leadership style plays a significant role in the formation of franchisee's revenue. The level of franchisee's intrinsic motivation is significantly moderated between franchisor's supportive leadership style and commitment. It is also revealed that commitment exhibit complete or partial mediation effect in the relationships between franchisor's all leadership style and franchisee's revenue. Implications and future research directions are also discussed.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.65-88
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• 2008

Since the implementation of economic reforms in 1978, the Chinese economy grows rapidly at an average annul growth rate of 9% over the post two decades. Franchising has been widely recognized as an important source of entrepreneurial activity. Trust is important in that it facilitates relational exchanges by permits partners to transcend short-run inequities or risks to concentrate on long-term profits or gains. In the relationship between the franchisors and franchisees, trust has been described as an important source of competitive advantage. However, little research has been done on the factors affecting trust in Chinese franchisor-franchisee relationships. The purpose of this study is to investigate what factors affect the trust in the franchise system in China, and to provide guidelines and insights to franchisors which enter Chinese market. In this study, according to Morgan and Hunt (1994), trust is defined as the extending when one party has confidence in an exchange partner's reliability and integrity. We offered a conceptual model of the empirical study. The model shows that the factors affecting the trust include franchisor's supports, communication, satisfaction with previous outcome and conflict. We also suggested the franchisor's supports and communication like to enhance the franchisee's satisfaction with previous outcome, and the franchisor's supports, communication and he franchisee's satisfaction with previous outcome tend to decrease conflict. Before the formal study, a pretest involving exploratory interviews with owners from three franchisees was conducted to make sure the questionnaire was relevant and clear to the respondents. The data were collected using trained interviewers to carry out personal interviews with the aid of an unidentified, muti-page, structured questionnaire. The respondents comprised of owners, managers, and owner managers of franchisee-owned food service franchises located in Beijing, China. Even though a total of 256 potential franchises were initially contacted, the finally usable sample consisted of 125 respondents. As expected, the sampling method was successful in soliciting respondents with waried personal and firm characteristics. Self-administrated questionnaires were used for all measures. And established scales were used to measure the latent constructs in this study. The measures tapped the franchisees' perceptions of the relationship with the referent franchisor. Five-point Likert-type scales ranging from "strongly disagree" (=1) to "strongly agree" (=7) were used throughout the constructs (trust, eight items; support, five items; communication, four items; satisfaction, six items; conflict, three items). The reliability measurements traditionally employed, such as the Cronbach's alpha, were used. All the reliabilities were greater than.80. The proposed measurement model was estimated using SPSS 12.0 and AMOS 5.0 analysis package. We conducted A series of exploratory factor analyses and confirmatory factor analyses to assess the convergent validity, discriminant validity, and reliability. The results indicate reasonable overall fits between the model and the observed data. The overall fit of measurement model were $X^2$= 159.699, p=0.004, d.f. = 116, GFI =.879, NFI =.898, CFI =.969, IFI =.970, TLI =.959, RMR =.058. The results demonstrated that the data reasonably fitted the model. We also examined construct reliability and reliability and average variance extracted (AVE). The construct reliability of each construct was greater than.80 and the AVE of each construct was greater than.50. According to the analysis of Structure Equation Modeling (SEM), the results of path model indicated an adequate fit of the model: $X^2$= 142.126, p = 0.044, d.f. = 115, GFI =.892, NFI =.909, CFI =.981, IFI =.981, TLI =.974, RMR =.057. As hypothesized, the results showed that it is strategically important to establish trust in a franchise system, and the franchisor's supports, communication and satisfaction with previous outcome tend to reinforce franchisee's trust. The results also showed trust seems to decrease as the experience of conflict episodes increases. And we also noticed that franchisor's supports and communication tend to enhance the franchisee's satisfaction with previous outcome, and communication tend to decrease conflict. If the trust between the franchisor and franchisee can be established in a franchise system, franchising offers many benefits and reduces many costs. To manage a mutual trust of relationship with their franchisees, franchisor's should provide support effectively to their franchisees. Effective assistant services have direct effect on franchisees' satisfaction with previous outcome and trust in franchisor. Especially, franchise sales process, orientation, and training in the start-up period are key elements for success of the franchise system. Franchisor's support is an accumulated separate satisfaction evaluation with different kind of service provided by the franchisor. And providing support definitely can improve the trustworthy image of the franchisor. In the franchise system, conflicts of interests and exertions of different power sources are very common. The experience of conflict episodes seems to negatively relate to trust. Therefore, it is important to reduce the negative side of the relationship conflicts. Communication actually plays a broader role in reducing conflict and establish mutual trust in franchisor-franchisee relationship. And effective communication between franchisors and franchisees can improve franchisees' satisfaction toward the franchise system. As the diversification of Chinese markets, both franchisors and franchisees must keep the relevant, timely, and reliable communication. And it is very important to improve the quality of communication. Satisfaction with precious outcomes seems to positively relate to trust. Franchisors and franchisees that are highly satisfied with the previous outcomes that flow from their relationship will perceive their partner as advancing their goal achievement. Therefore, it is necessary for both franchisor and their franchisees to make the welfare of partner with effort. Little literature has focused on what factors affect the trust between franchisors and their franchisees in China. This study developed the hypotheses regarding the factors affecting trust in the transaction relationship. The results of data analysis supported the hypotheses strongly. There are certain limitations in this study. First, we may point out that some other factors missed in this study could be significantly important. Second, the context of this study, food service industry, limits its potential generalizability for all franchise systems. More studies in different categories of franchise system are needed to broaden its generalizability. Third, the model was tested empirically in a sample in Beijing, more empirical tests of the proposed model in other Chinese areas are needed. Finally, the analysis in this study was solely based on the perception of franchisees and the opinions of franchisors were not included.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.95-118
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is as follows. First, we investigate empirically the effects of social network properties such as social network density and centrality of a franchisee on its information sharing with various subjects such as the franchisor and other franchisees in the franchise system. Second, we examine exploratively if tie strength between a franchisee and its franchisor plays a moderating role on the relationship between social network properties and information sharing. The study model was established as shown in

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.21-47
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• 2004

This study has investigated the effects of relieving and promoting factors on dissolution intention under the condition of low commitment buyer-seller relationships. Based on intensive literature reviews, eight alleviating factors (dependence, cooperation, communication, relational norms, transaction specific investments, relationship termination costs, satisfaction, and trust) and five promoting factors (opportunism, conflict, goal incongruity, attractiveness of alternatives, and unfairness) were included. A total of thirteen hypotheses were testee using data collected from a dining franchising system. Among 300 collected, 79 cases of low commitment buyer-seller relationships were analyzed. The results showed that eight out of thirteen hypotheses were supported. But five hypotheses related to the variables of cooperation, transaction specific investments, relationship termination costs, attractiveness of alternatives, and opportunism were not supported. following a detailed presentation of the analysis results, the paper concludes by discussing the academic and managerial implications of the findings.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.226-238
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• 2010

This study investigates the recovery of trust and provision of a contract between a franchiser and a franchisee in the food service industry. It has come to the following results after analyzing the inter-affections among the franchisers' conditions, the trust level of their support and their intention to contract. First, such factors as experience, confidence, and expertise of a franchisee have significant effects on the terms of a franchiser. Second, ad support, experience, expertise, confidence, and capital factors have significant effects. Third, such factors as history of a franchiser, the number of its franchisees, its brand have significantly influence on trust. Fourth, educational support, utilization of job instruction and purchasing of packages have significant effects on intention to contract.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.63-73
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• 2011

The relationship between buyers and sellers is changing into a long-term relationship. A number of distribution channel researchers have determined that the behavior of distribution channel members can be characterized by relational exchanges. The members of relational distribution channels may be perceived as strategic partners; however, even within these arrangements, member asymmetries may exist, which can create unequal distributions of power and dependence. Thus, as all distribution channel members may not be equal in power, it is possible that a less-dependent channel leader may emerge. Therefore, leadership in distribution channels is a very important variable. Distribution channel leadership can be defined as the activities undertaken by the distribution channel leader to influence the marketing programs and strategies of channel members. A distribution channel's performance is influenced by the leadership style of the channel leader. Although research on channel leadership styles can be broadly categorized, many researchers have dealt with analyzing distribution channel leadership by using the power-influence approach, which includes looking at variables, such as power, power base, and influence strategies. Moreover, they have examined the direct relationship between leadership styles and performance. Many distribution channel scholars have attempted to justify the application of leadership styles identified in alternative leadership theories to the inter-organizational context of distribution channels. They have made suggestions regarding how great the usefulness of leadership style as a strategy is to secure the compliance of distribution channel members and have conceptually and empirically linked it to channel-related phenomena, such as manifest conflict, cooperation, channel efficiency, and effectiveness. However, as few empirical studies have examined the antecedents and consequences of leadership styles, research on leadership style can be considered nascent. Thus, it is required to investigate the antecedents and consequences of the leadership style of a distribution channel leader. This study aims to empirically identify whether there are influences of the antecedents of leadership on two different leadership styles, and to reveal whether these leadership styles induce any consequences. The research subjects were 220 franchisees. Research findings are as follows: First, the results show a positive effect of technological capability on transformational relationships. However, it does not have a significant effect on transactional leadership. Second, innovation-oriented organizational culture has negatively influenced both leaderships. However, task-oriented organizational culture positively and significantly influenced both forms of leadership. Third, the ethics of leaders has influenced both leadership styles positively and significantly. Fourth, regarding consequences, transformational leadership strengthens financial performances, whereas it weakens relational citizenship behaviors. However, transactional leadership positively influences relational citizenship behavior whilst negatively affecting financial performance.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.26 no.12
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• pp.273-281
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• 2021

In this paper, we propose a ways how YouTube Mukbang content attributes affect favorability, satisfaction, and brand selection, and suggest to use YouTube Mukbang contents, and to propose a strategic marketing plan using YouTube at the food franchise. This study conducted survey on 218 people who had watched chicken Mukbang among YouTube Mukbang contents. Through previous studies, YouTube content attributes were classified into informativity, entertainment, reliability, and attractiveness. To verify the hypothesis of the study, single regression and multiple regression analysis were conducted for verifying the relationship between variables. Key results of the study are as follows. First, it was found that YouTube Mukbang content attributes had a positive relationship with favorability. Second, it was found that YouTube Mukbang content attributes had a positive relationship with satisfaction. Third, it was found that favorability had an effect on satisfaction. Fourth, it was found that favorability influenced brand selection. Fifth, it was found that satisfaction did not affect brand selection. Based on these findings, a strategic approach will be needed to increase users' favorability by providing attractive and accurate information through YouTube Mukbang contents and to continuously improve brand choices through continuous favorability to revitalizing YouTube marketing at the food franchise.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.25-35
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• 2019

Purpose - The major objective of this study was to investigate the effect of franchisor's (economic and philanthropic) CSR in inspiring franchisee's loyalty for the franchisor. Another aim of this investigation also was to clarify the mediating role of economic and social satisfaction in the relationship between franchisor's CSR and franchisee's loyalty. Research design, data, and methodology - This study explores the structural relationship between franchisor's CSR and franchisee's loyalty and in these relationships, the mediating role of relationship satisfaction. Data were gathered from employees(above manager) in food-service franchisee companies in Seoul, Korea. The questionnaires were distributed to managers of the franchise stores. A total of 251 questionnaires were collected. Data management and analysis were performed using SPSS 21.O and SmartPLS 3.0. Evaluation of measurement model and structural model was carried out using confirmatory factor analysis and correlation analysis. Result - The results of this study show as follows. First, economic CSR had positive effects on economic satisfaction and social satisfaction. Second, philanthropic CSR had positive effects on social satisfaction. Third, economic satisfaction and social satisfaction had positive effects on franchisee's loyalty to the franchisor. Conclusions - The important implications of this study have as follows. First, this study has found that economic CSR can create a high economic satisfaction and social satisfaction of franchisee. Second, this findings suggest that the philanthropic CSR can improve the social satisfaction of franchisee. Third, this results demonstrate, for the first time, that the economic satisfaction and social satisfaction of franchisees can play a crucial role to improve their loyalty for the franchisor and pursue mutual development by maintaining the stable business relationship with a franchisor. In this investigation there are at least three limitations. First, Because the research sample is limited to the foodservice franchisee in Seoul, it is not possible to be representativeness of the national franchisee. Second, CSR activities are mostly focused on large franchise companies. Therefore, there is a limit to the research approach. Finally, this study examined the effect of economic CSR and philanthropic CSR on the loyalty of franchisors, but in the future study, it is necessary to analyze the relationship between CSR and loyalty of franchise companies by collecting specific quantitative data such as re-contract rate and management performance of franchisees.