• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
• /
• v.15 no.3
• /
• pp.1-15
• /
• 2024

Purpose: The insurance market is steadily growing, with General Agencies (GA) experiencing rapid sales increases. GAs need marketing strategies to boost contract renewal intentions by effectively managing customer relationships. This study examines the impact of perceived customer orientation and sales orientation on customer trust, identification, and renewal intentions with GA insurance planners. Research design, data, and methodology: The study surveyed customers who subscribe to insurance products from GA-affiliated insurance planners. Out of 615 respondents, 251 valid responses were analyzed using frequency analysis, measurement models, and structural equation modeling (SEM) with SmartPLS 4.0. Result: The study revealed that customer orientation positively affects cognitive trust and sense of identification. In contrast, sales orientation did not significantly impact customer trust or identification. Additionally, customer trust positively influences sense of identification, and both trust and identification positively affect the intention to renew the contract. Conclusions: Implementing a customer-oriented marketing strategy is essential for providing tailored customer management services and maintaining or improving the quality of customer relationships for insurance planners. Given that insurance products require long-term management, it is crucial for planners to build trust, enhance customer identification, and offer continuous customer management to meet customers' needs effectively.

• Journal of Distribution Science
• /
• v.13 no.4
• /
• pp.65-76
• /
• 2015

Purpose - This article aims to present and test a model regarding franchisors' supporting activities that may positively influence franchisees' attitude toward the franchising headquarter and their own business performance. Moreover, the authors examine the moderating effect of competitive intensity between franchisee attitude and business performance. Most previous research focused on behavioral performance measurements such as satisfaction, trust, and commitment. There are few empirical studies that focus on financial performance data because it is difficult to determine a relational mechanism between behavioral and financial performance. Moreover, financial data is confidential and difficult to collect in many cases. However, this study measures financial performance (e.g., sales revenue per square meter) differently than most previous research, which is mostly focused on the behavioral performance measurements. Research design, data, and methodology - To test our hypotheses, we selected 137 franchisee managers who are running chains of one of the foremost bakery franchise brands in South Korea. This study carefully investigated the reliability, content validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity of the proposed instrument by analyzing the data obtained from the samples. The data was analyzed using the AMOS structural equation modeling program. Results - The results indicated that: non-financial support activities (e.g., information exchange and communication) had a positive impact on the franchisee attitude toward the franchising headquarter. The franchisee attitude in turn had a positive effect on the headquarters' business performance. Furthermore, competitive intensity could enhance the relationship between franchisee attitude toward franchising headquarter and business performance in a local franchise market. However, financial support activities (e.g., rewards and promotional support) and training had no relationship with either franchisee attitude or business performance. Conclusions - This study provides some practical implications to franchisors in terms of franchise operation and store opening strategies. With respect to the franchise operation strategy, franchisors need to focus on non-financial rather than financial support. Most franchisees consider the necessity of financial support activities and not their sufficiency because these activities are specified in their franchise contract. In addition, it is important for franchisees to maintain a positive attitude for the franchise headquarters. The franchisees with a positive attitude for the franchisor can show a high degree of solidarity for various support activities, and it consequently determines franchisees' sales performance. In terms of franchise store opening strategy, this study suggests an additional criterion that can be considered in determining the location of direct and non-direct management stores (e.g., franchisees' stores). In this research, franchise stores located within high level of competitive intensity are shown to have a high relationship between franchisee attitudes of franchisor support activities and business performance compared to the franchisees located within low competitive intensity level. This result shows that opening non-direct franchise stores is more effective than direct stores in higher competitive market situations. Research contribution, implications, and further research directions are discussed at the end of the paper.

• Journal of Distribution Science
• /
• v.17 no.9
• /
• pp.67-81
• /
• 2019

Purpose - The overarching aim of this study is to empirically test the effect of ex-post control mechanisms on multi-dimensional trust and channel performance in franchise systems. Although the franchise system is a vertical marketing channel based on trust between the franchisor and the franchisees, issues related to franchisee's opportunistic behavior have persisted and thus requires research into the effective control system of franchise headquarters. Research design, data, and methodology - In this study, data was collected from 150 franchises to identify the effect of two types of franchising headquarters' control system on the multi-dimensional trust and franchise channel outcome between franchisor and franchisee. To test the hypotheses intended to achieve this aim, structural equations modeling technique is utilized. Results - The results of this research reveal that among the two formal control systems studied (output and process control), output control positively and significantly affects multidimensional trust. Additionally, among the three dimensions of trust employed in this study, only expertise has a positive and significant effect on contract compliance. Equally, only expertise and integrity have a negative and significant effect on opportunistic behavior. Conclusions - The study provides managerial and theoretical insights into understanding ex-post control mechanisms, trust, compliance and opportunistic behaviors in franchise systems.

• Journal of Distribution Research
• /
• v.16 no.3
• /
• pp.33-75
• /
• 2011

The ownership structure of a franchise system is determined by the franchisor's strategic choice. A close look at the extant theories and perspectives in economics and management such as resource scarcity theory, agency theory, transaction cost analysis, and mixed ownership theory reveals that firms choose their ownership structure for the sake of economic efficiency, profit potentials, the chance of survival, and other strategic concerns. The present study, on the basis of strategic choice perspective, reviews the divergent theories of a franchise system's ownership structure and its determinants, thus providing a theoretical framework for comparing the contradictory arguments along the several critical dimensions. We also developed and tested the conflicting hypotheses regarding key determinants of ownership structure including firm's age, size, transaction-specific investments, uncertainty, and risk-sharing propensity. Using a FDD (Franchise Disclosure Document) data set of 543 Korean franchisors, we found that the years in business, the total number of employees, days of training, the inverse of the years of franchising, and the requirement of royalty payment have positive relationships with the proportion of company-owned outlets to total number of outlets. On the other hand, the proportion of company-owned outlets was found to have negative relationships with the total number of outlets and the extent of geographic dispersion of outlets, but to have no significant relationships with the initial investment required and the inverse of contract length. Based on the findings, we provide several theoretical and managerial implications for studying ownership structure of franchise systems.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
• /
• v.5 no.1
• /
• pp.249-272
• /
• 1999

The purpose of this was to solve conceptual problems of family restaurant through theoretical approach, to improve problems associated with managing restaurants, and to suggest plans for family restaurant chains. First of all, in order to improve the problems of franchising, the contents of contract were analyzed by showing the examples, and the methods were illustrated to analyze the overall contents. Hereafter, family restaurants will be categorized as either 'Casual Dining' or 'Theme Restaurant', some of the nicknames for family restaurant. However, the fundamental categories will be in accordance with the categories of NRA of the U.S.A. as 'Family Chain Restaurant', 'Grill-Buffet Restaurant' and 'Dinner House'. It is hoped that the future study categorize these three in more details. The problems of restaurant management were considered to be concerned with the owner and the managerial problems. As a way to overcome the problems associated with restaurant chain concept, the importance of manual and food & beverage production, the analysis on different methods of store development, the characteristics of manual, the interested items when filling-out, and the methods were presented. The basic systems of commissary food service were introduced and their effects were presented as well in this study. The stages of store development and the models of expansion were presented for an analysis. The main focus of this study was to grasp the flow of organizational and store expansion by analyzing on-site stores and headquarters office hence find out the reason why the current portion of family restaurant is decreasing and not increasing among dining out industry. Therefore, it has brought a great opportunity to seize the problems of structual systems of family restaurant. A family restaurant is no longer perceived as an ordinary restaurant, yet it represents a whole new cultural environment due to the unique characteristics of family restaurant such as its food culture, protocol, and various shapes and sizes. The researcher of this study extends his wish that the future study reinvestigates differently categorized family restaurant and gives much attention to a systematically independent research subject.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
• /
• v.13 no.4
• /
• pp.23-37
• /
• 2022

Purpose: The Korean franchise market has undergone drastic growth in recent years. Followed by expansion of franchise business types, relevant legal matters have diversified. Compared to conventional economic laws that focused on resolving problems related to unfair transactions between franchisors and franchisees, more diverse labor laws have emerged recently due to governance and economic dependencies of franchise structure. However, it was found that the business environment of franchisees and working conditions of franchisee employees have not changed accordingly due to the unique structure of franchise business. Though franchisees are entrepreneurs independent from franchisors, they are still under franchising contract with the franchisors. For instance, employees of franchisees have been exposed to malpractices in regard to pay, time, and other working conditions. These malpractices may show the ineffectiveness of current labor laws. Labor management is an important issue for sustainability of franchise businesses. Negative publicity of franchises generated from violating relevant labor laws may have significant negative impact on overall image of franchised brands. However, franchisors should not hold franchisees fully responsible for legal violations in terms of labor management but strive to prevent relevant risks. Thus, the recent amendment in labor law related to increased minimum wage and reduced worktime have called for more attention to effectively implementing the law. Research design, data, and methodology: This study was conducted through a review of franchise-related laws and various institutions and policies. Results: It is further needed for all parties, including franchisors, franchisees, and franchisee employees, to take collaborative actions to improve working conditions of franchisees. Therefore, this study aims to propose appropriate and effective response plans toward recent changes in the Minimum Wage Act, while strengthening sustainability of franchisors, franchisees, and their employees. Conclusions: The proposal mainly contains plans regarding profit-related aids and profit sharing/cost reduction strategies for franchisees, as well as collective bargaining in the franchisor-franchisee relation. More detailed suggestions are included. Conclusions: This proposal may help franchisors and policymakers develop business plans and policies in improving business conditions of franchisees and working conditions of franchisee employees.