• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.31-42
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• 2019

Purpose : This study can provide various implications for the franchisors to expand activities related to franchise support or to develop andoperate an education program for foodservice franchise owners. Research design, data, and methodology : For those purpose, first, the literatureand literature related to the competency of domestic franchise owner were collected and reviewed through the Korea Education and Research Information Service (RISS). Second, the questionnaire was prepared based on the theoretical basis prepared through previous studies. Based onthe foodservice franchise owner's competency model presented by Kim & Lee (2019b), 13 franchise owner's competencies were marked with both 'What is' levels and 'What should be' levels. Therefore, the total questionnaire consists of 26 questions. Third, questionnaires were distributed and collected. This study used data from 55 surveys which were gathered from foodservice franchise owners in Seongnam-si. SPSS 25.0 was used to analyze the collected survey data. Descriptive and frequency analysis were conducted to analyze the demographic characteristics of the study subjects. Next, we conduct a t-test to analyze the difference between the level of 'What is' competencies by the franchise owners and the level of 'What should be' competencies. Descriptive statistics were used to derive the priorities of the 'What should be' competencies. The Locus for Focus model was used to derive the priorities of the required competencies. Result : Four competencies of team leadership, teamwork and cooperation, customer service, technical·professional·managerial expertise were found to be the first to be developed. Conclusions : The conclusions of this study are as follows. First, teamwork and cooperation competnecy, and team leadership competency, which are derived from the core competencies of foodservice franchise owners, are among the leadership competencies required as managers of organizations. Second, customer service competency and ttechnical·professional·managerial expertise competency derived from the core competencies of restaurant franchise owners belong to the job competencies. Third, the results of this study suggest that the foodservice franchisors will be able that will serve as a baseline to support the foodservice franchisors and franchise owners for sustainable mutual growth by encouraging their will and encouraging them to create results.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.39-48
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• 2022

Purpose: COVID-19 has negatively influenced the financial performance of restaurant firms. Previous literature suggests that the franchising strategy effectively helps restaurant firms recover from difficult business conditions through various methods for expanding business size and enhancing business efficiency. According to risk-sharing theory, restaurant franchisors may minimize operational risks by sharing the risks with their franchisees. For instance, restaurant franchisors could generate more stable cash flow using franchise fees from their franchisees. However, research on the effect of franchise's risk reduction factor on business performance during pandemic is scarce. Thus, this study aims to examine the positive moderating effect of franchising between COVID-19 and restaurants' financial performance. Research design, data, and methodology: Panel data including financial information and franchising status of restaurant firms were collected for analysis. In order to control for unobserved firm-specific factors, generalized least squared estimation in fixed effects model was conducted. Huber-White robust standard errors were used to deal with heteroscedasticity issues. Results: It was found that COVID-19 pandemic has a negative effect on the restaurants' financial performance such as ROA (return on assets), ROE (return on equity), and PM (profit margins), which confirms the findings from existing literature. More importantly, results show that the degree of franchising has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between COVID-19 and financial performance of restaurant firms. This suggests that more active engagement in franchising may decrease negative impacts of COVID-19 on the restaurants' financial performance. Conclusions: The study supports existing literature related to risk-sharing theory, by confirming that pandemics, such as COVID-19, negatively affect financial performance of the restaurants. Furthermore, it was found that franchising strategy can help lessen negative impacts of pandemics on the firm performance. These findings can contribute to the franchise and restaurant management literature by suggesting the role of franchising in reducing business risks, thereby positively affecting financial performance. Moreover, this study offers business managers of franchisors and franchisees insights for utilizing franchising in restaurant risk management. Policymakers may also gain information on aiding restaurant firms during global crisis, such as COVID-19.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.11-22
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• 2014

Purpose - The domestic franchise industry has made significant contributions to industry such as investment, employment, and community economy development, facilitating growth potential. The franchise industry provides management knowhow transfer between parent companies and franchisees as per contracts addressing use of business signs, franchisees' independent position, franchisor support, and royalties to be paid to the franchisors. However, many franchisors lack management knowhow and provide insufficient support because of poor control of franchisees and not having a systematic approach to support. This results in dissatisfied franchisees and failure to establish long-term relationships. Few studies have examined relational commitment and/or re-contract intention by support resources between franchisors and franchisees, despite a considerable output of theories and studies of the growth of the franchise industry. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to examine the effects of the ability to provide resources on relational commitments and re-contract intention, and to suggest causal relationships and implications. Research design, data, and methodology - The subject was domestic franchisors registered with the Association of Franchise with more than 50 franchisees. Franchisees under contract for 2 years and considering re-contract of their franchise 2 years later were used. The subjects totaled 300 franchisees in Seoul. A questionnaire survey was used to investigate the subject of franchisees' concessions during the 10 days from November 21, 2013 to November 30, 2013. After excluding 16 surveys with poor answers, 284 responses were finally used. Four areas and 44 questions were used. A nominal scale was used for four common characteristics questions including gender, ages, educational background, and franchise managing time. Questions regarding ability, relational commitment, and re-contract intention made use of a Likert 5-point scale. Data coding and data cleaning were used. SPSS 18.0 was used as follows. First, frequency analysis was done to investigate demographic characteristics. Second, exploratory factor analysis was done to verify validity of testing tools, and Cronbach's α coefficient was used to verify reliability. Third, correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis were done. An exploratory factor analysis was done to verify validity of concepts. A correlation analysis was done to test relationships between the variables, and multiple regression analysis was done to verify franchisor's ability, franchisees' relational commitment, and re-contract intention. Results - The following were the outcomes. First, store operation management, finance operation management, and human resource management affected the calculated bond. Second, store operation management and finance operation management affected the emotional bond. Third, store operation management, finance operation management, human resource management, and marketing management affected the prescriptive bond. Fourth, calculated bond and prescriptive bond had an effect on re-contract intention. Conclusions - As stated above, in franchise management, parent companies' offer and instruction of core competence to their franchisees as an information resource could improve the relational bond by helping them grow together through the resource sharing. Consequently, core competence factors were promoting factors that could improve franchisees' re-contract intention for a long time.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.141-160
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• 2006

The esthetic center skips over the dimension of simply theoretical knowledge by the specialization, segmentation, and gentrification and the importance of the technical education which introduced into the spot experienceis raising its head. And the esthetic center's importance which copes with the environment changing actively is being cognized. The franchisee system of esthetic shows that while the domestic market is opened, the appearance of foreign famous brand-centered is increasing rapidly. According to this kind of trend, every kind of mediums will not stop the classified ad of franchisee and it will be recognized as the promising sector. Especially, the situation of franchisee is that franchisors and franchisees in the limited relationship and just plan the growth, so the success possibly can be very high. The diffusion of franchisee system and the study about the franchisee are developed on the diverse view points. But still now, the study is just formed from the enterprise's success and the franchisors view point, the study about the franchisees dimension is very small. But it is also very important to exam the decision factors of franchisees success because the franchisors result of franchisee system will come out with franchisee performance totally. In this paper, it will actually proof if the decisive factors that exert influence on the franchisee performance in the franchisee dimension, exert influence on the franchisee performance in substance; and exam what kind of relationship the franchisee performance have with the franchisors and recontract intention. According to this, we can draw out the rest decision factors of improving the franchisee performance, and also show the strategic implication of franchisee efficient marketing.

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

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.1-23
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• 2011

The Freedom of Information System has been introduced into the society based on the Fair Trade Transactions Act, which was established by Fair Trade Commission (FTC) on May, 2002. However, the system itself has showed limitations in guaranteeing a reliability and transparency of the disclosure document. Thus, since February, 2008, FTC not only made franchisors to register disclosure documents but also adopted the Disclosure Document Registration System, which forced them to provide registered disclosure documents to franchise applicants and franchisee. Franchisors consider the newly adopted Disclosure Document Registration System a restrictive system. However, considering the recent trend of fast growing franchising industry and the importance of being competitive, franchisors need to utilize the disclosure documents to promote their business and to gain trusts from franchise applicants by providing truthful information. In that way, franchisors will be able to establish a foundation that franchising industry might be successful and reduce the agency fee by cutting out conflicts with franchisees. Thus, this study aims to study the ways of effective preparation of disclosure document and its utilization from a franchisor viewpoint.

• 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 Science
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.39-47
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• 2014

Purpose - The ultimate goal of a franchise system comes from its win-win strategy. Agency theory uses goal incongruity to examine complex contracting problems between buyers and suppliers. Goal incongruity within a contractual relationship can be defined as the agent's desire not to cooperate. It is the degree to which the contractual terms do not satisfy the agent's goals. The greater the goal incongruity between the agent and the contract, the more likely it is that the agent will meet the terms of the contract. Thus, goal incongruity between buyers and suppliers has close relationships with both behavioral and financial performance. This study tries to examine these relationships in the franchise context using a model including related variables, such as regulatory foci, financial performance, and opportunism, to explain the reasons that not all franchisees perform their best. In particular, the study examines the effects of goal incongruity on regulatory focus, and the effects of regulatory focus on performance and opportunism. In short, the objective is to determine goal incongruity's effect on regulatory foci, and the effect of regulatory focus on performance and opportunism. Research design, data, and methodology - This study used data collected from the franchisee managers of 104 franchisors in South Korea. The franchisors include more than 10 franchisees, the majority of whom have been in business for more than five years. The study also surveyed 104 franchisees, matched with their franchisors for the sake of a dyadic approach. The study used regression analysis to test the hypotheses. Results - H1 and H2 predicted that goal incongruity would decrease promotion focus and increase prevention focus. Supporting H1, the result indicates goal incongruity had a positive effect on promotion focus. However, H2 was not supported. Goal incongruity had no significant effect on prevention focus (β = -.375, t = -4.331 and β = -.145, t = -1.950, respectively). H3 and H4 predicted that promotion focus would increase financial performance and decrease opportunism. Supporting these hypotheses, the results indicate that promotion focus had a positive effect on financial performance and a negative effect on opportunism (β = .771, t = 7.899 and β = -.765, t = -6.778, respectively). H5 and H6 predicted that prevention focus would decrease financial performance and increase opportunism. However, the results do not support these hypotheses. The results indicate that prevention focus had no effects on opportunism or financial performance (β = -.130, t = -1.070 and β = .090, t = .641, respectively). Overall, the evidence generally supported the hypotheses. Conclusion - Goal incongruity between a franchisor and a franchisee increases the franchisee's financial performance and opportunism, and the relationship is mediated by promotion focus. Interestingly, however, prevention focus has no mediating effect between goal incongruity and performance. Even though no significant relation exists between goal incongruity and prevention focus, the results have two implications. First, decreasing goal incongruity can improve financial performance and suppress franchisee opportunism. Second, the relationship between goal incongruity and performance affects promotion-focused franchisees.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.9
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• pp.95-110
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• 2016

Purpose - Based on expectation-disconfirmation theory, this study attempted to fill the gap in the literature by treating the expected profitability as a moderator in the relationship between these constructs, identifying what instrumental factors have effects on dissatisfaction, in turn lead to exit intention, neglect, voice, and loyalty, and provide the managerial implications for building long-term relationship to enhance the partnership between franchisor and franchisee. Research design, data and methodology - In order to test the hypotheses, the authors developed several hypotheses. The data were collected from 254 franchisees in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province with SPSS 18.0 and SmartPLS 2.0. Results - The findings of the study are as follows. First, marketing support and competitiveness of product and service had a negative effect on dissatisfaction, but did not on logistics support. Second, franchisee dissatisfaction had a positive effect on exit intention and neglect, and had a negative effect on loyalty. However, franchisee dissatisfaction had not a significant effect on voice. Third, expected profits play a moderating role in the relationships between marketing support, competitiveness of product and service and dissatisfaction, between dissatisfaction and exit intention, voice, loyalty, and neglect. First, marketing support and competitiveness of product and service were found to have a greater influence on dissatisfaction for the low expected profitability group than the highly expected profitability group. Also, dissatisfaction had a greater impact on exit intention, voice, and neglect for the low expected profitability group than the high expected profitability group while dissatisfaction had a weaker impact on loyalty for high expected profitability group. Conclusions - The result of this study indicates that franchisors should reduce dissatisfaction and prevent or improve complaint behaviors by continuously identifying the impact relationship between franchisee dissatisfaction and decision factors caused by difference in expectations for roles of franchisees and franchisors. In addition, franchisors should acknowledge that the impacts of marketing support, and product and service competitiveness on franchisee dissatisfaction and on exit intention, neglect, and loyalty differ by expected profits. Therefore they should provide support in perceiving high expected profits through creating direct profits including high sales, low costs, and low rents.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.85-108
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• 2014

This study provides the information about size, financial structure, profitability and growth of franchisors using financial data(asset, liability, equity, sales volume, operating income and net income) in uniform franchise offering circular of fair trade commission. The data were collected from 1,050 franchisors in various business fields: fast food, family restaurant, bakery, agriculture & fishery and liquor shop in the uniform franchise offering circular in 2012 and 2011. Results of this study are as follows: For company size, median of total assets was KRW 675 million and the accumulated median assets rate was 0.48%, but the accumulated median company numbers were 49.9%, which showed small size. For financial structure, 525 companies were below 200% debt ratio, while 314 (29.9%) companies were in over 200% debt, and 211 (20.1%) companies were impaired in capital. These also showed financial structure was vulunerable. For profitability, median of ROA for total companies were only 4.72%, which showed low profitability. For growth, median of growth rate for sales were 7.57% per year, which showed mature industry. In overall, the results showed franchisors should improve their financial status.