• Journal of Distribution Research
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.95-115
• /
• 2011

Food service is the major part of franchise business in Korea, accounting for 69.9% of the brands in the market. As the food service industry becomes mature, many franchisees have struggled to survive in the market. In general, consumers have higher levels of expectation toward service quality of franchised outlets compared that of (non-franchised) independent ones. They also tend to believe that franchisees deliver standardized service at the uniform food price, regardless of their locations. Such beliefs seem to be important reasons that consumers prefer franchised outlets to independent ones. Nevertheless, few studies examined the impact of qualify features of franchisees on customer satisfaction so far. To this end, this study examined the characteristics of various quality features of franchisees in the food service industry, regarding their relationship with customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. The quality perception of heavy-users was also compared with that of light-users in order to find insights for developing differentiated marketing strategy for the two segments. Customer satisfaction has been understood as a one-dimensional construct while there are recent studies that insist two-dimensional nature of the construct. In this regard, Kano et al. (1984) suggested to categorize quality features of a product or service into five types, based on their relation to customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction: Must-be quality, Attractive quality, One-dimensional quality, Indifferent quality, and Reverse quality. According to the Kano model, customers are more dissatisfied when Must-be quality(M) are not fulfilled, but their satisfaction does not arise above neutral no matter how fully the quality fulfilled. In comparison, customers are more satisfied with a full provision of Attactive quality(A) but manage to accept its dysfunction. One-dimensional quality(O) results in satisfaction when fulfilled and dissatisfaction when not fulfilled. For Indifferent quality(I), its presence or absence influences neither customer satisfaction nor dissatisfaction. Lastly, Reverse quality(R) refers to the features whose high degree of achievement results in customer dissatisfaction rather than satisfaction. Meanwhile, the basic guidelines of the Kano model have a limitation in that the quality type of each feature is simply determined by calculating the mode statistics. In order to overcome such limitation, the relative importance of each feature on customer satisfaction (Better value; b) and dissatisfaction (Worse value; w) were calculated following the formulas below (Timko, 1993). The Better value indicates how much customer satisfaction is increased by providing the quality feature in question. In contrast, the Worse value indicates how much customer dissatisfaction is decreased by providing the quality feature. Better = (A + O)/(A+O+M+I) Worse = (O+M)/(A+O+M+I)(-1) An on-line survey was performed in order to understand the nature of quality features of franchisees in the food service industry by applying the Kano Model. A total of twenty quality features (refer to the Table 2) were identified as the result of literature review in franchise business and a pre-test with fifty college students in Seoul. The potential respondents of our main survey was limited to the customers who have visited more than two restaurants/stores of the same franchise brand. Survey invitation e-mails were sent out to the panels of a market research company and a total of 257 responses were used for analysis. Following the guidelines of Kano model, each of the twenty quality features was classified into one of the five types based on customers' responses to a set of questions: "(1) how do you feel if the following quality feature is fulfilled in the franchise restaurant that you visit," and "(2) how do you feel if the following quality feature is not fulfilled in the franchise restaurant that you visit." The analyses revealed that customers' dissatisfaction with franchisees is commonly associated with the poor level of cleanliness of the store (w=-0.872), kindness of the staffs(w=-0.890), conveniences such as parking lot and restroom(w=-0.669), and expertise of the staffs(w=-0.492). Such quality features were categorized as Must-be quality in this study. While standardization or uniformity across franchisees has been emphasized in franchise business, this study found that consumers are interested only in uniformity of price across franchisees(w=-0.608), but not interested in standardizations of menu items, interior designs, customer service procedures, and food tastes. Customers appeared to be more satisfied when the franchise brand has promotional events such as giveaways(b=0.767), good accessibility(b=0.699), customer loyalty programs(b=0.659), award winning history(b=0.641), and outlets in the overseas market(b=0.506). The results are summarized in a matrix form in Table 1. Better(b) and Worse(w) index indicate relative importance of each quality feature on customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction, respectively. Meanwhile, there were differences in perceiving the quality features between light users and heavy users of any specific franchise brand in the food service industry. Expertise of the staffs was labeled as Must-be quality for heavy users but Indifferent quality for light users. Light users seemed indifferent to overseas expansion of the brand and offering new menu items on a regular basis, while heavy users appeared to perceive them as Attractive quality. Such difference may come from their different levels of involvement when they eat out. The results are shown in Table 2. The findings of this study help practitioners understand the quality features they need to focus on to strengthen the competitive power in the food service market. Above all, removing the factors that cause customer dissatisfaction seems to be the most critical for franchisees. To retain loyal customers of the franchise brand, it is also recommended for franchisor to invest resources in the development of new menu items as well as training programs for the staffs. Lastly, if resources allow, promotional events, loyalty programs, overseas expansion, award-winning history can be considered as tools for attracting more customers to the business.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.10 no.3
• /
• pp.660-664
• /
• 2009

Over the past several years many researchers have attempted to explore the determinants of franchise restaurant success. This study is a research on the critical success factors of the franchise restaurant management which is expanding. The purpose of this study is to present right information to the managers of franchise restaurant fur their marketing and sales. The information is achieved from studying customers' intention. I also measured customers' satisfaction fur management of franchise restaurant and assessed maturation extent. In conclusion, The results show franchise restaurant's menu, atmosphere and accessibility are a considerable level in research results. However, franchise restaurant's brand, service, food, price and size are low level(determinants fact). Therefore, franchise managers have to complement a those factors. The result indicated that the points in time of forecast about the franchise restaurants CSFs are in 5 years mainly.

• Journal of Distribution Science
• /
• v.11 no.8
• /
• pp.25-30
• /
• 2013

Purpose - Foodservices have grown to over 60% of the franchise industry. However, despite reaching this high level, the foodservice franchise industry is experiencing severe ups and downs. While factors such as expansion by franchises and the entry of large multinational firms are causing this imbalance, the more serious problem faced by franchisees is the lack of know-how and correct operating procedures. Franchise headquarters should advise franchisees on important matters such as food ingredients, interior design, tableware, and fixtures. However, even though franchise headquarters have the ability to impart such management know-how, this is often a neglected area. Research design, data and methodology - This study was conducted in an industrial environment to present suitable competitive alternatives for foodservice franchises. Empirical analysis was conducted using a sample of 232 people with experience in targeting customers. The main purpose of this study is not to identify and analyze the factors affecting customer satisfaction. Customers of the Food Service Industry to invite contacts until departure for the service flow by identifying the expectations and allow this area by analyzing the resulting measures to enhance the competitiveness has presented. Results - Actual results contact factors affecting the quality of service on customer satisfaction was a significant influence. However, the end of this analysis, the actual customer satisfaction directly affects the quality of service that is only important factor can commit mistakes. Relatively large impact on customer satisfaction, which is relatively independent of the quality factor should be a review of zone of tolerance. In this study, eating phase relative to contact the service customer satisfaction was the most influential. The results, however, zone of tolerance for an area in the waiting and ordering dissatisfaction factors are appearing. And in the course of these services outside the zone of tolerance area is unsatisfactory evaluation is being done. Conclusions - After all, Foodservice, the contact service management for zone of tolerance the top priority should be can be seen. Foodservice contact first in the case of service quality factors caused by the continuous flow of services, so this step-by-step identification needs to be clearer. This, of course, to distinguish between the actual per unit of activity appears to be more difficult to follow, for it seems to need a lot of future complementary. Next is the assessment of customer service quality. Customers remember the experience for the services of a real contact through the assessment and service evaluation clearly emerge as the expected level can be difficult. However, this situation is controlled by the test method cannot be avoided unless there is no limit to the number of leave. Despite these limitations, the next step to contact a service evaluation and analysis have to continue to refine and thereby franchisees for the operation of the store in terms of practical know-how required to provide to the office believe.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
• /
• v.9 no.2
• /
• pp.7-16
• /
• 2018

Purpose - Turnover Intention in the franchise industry is becoming a very important issue. This study examines the structural relationships between organizational justice, emotion, job satisfaction, and turnover intention in the franchise industry. In this model, emotion was classified into two sub-dimensions such as positive and negative emotion. Research design, data, methodology - The sample of this study collected from employees of a food-service franchise company is representative. Copies of the questionnaire along with a cover letter were delivered by a research assistant to the human resources manager or the general manager of the selected food-service franchise firms after they agreed to participate in the study. In order to increase the response rate of the respondents, a small gift was provided to the respondents who completed the questionnaire. A total of 300 questionnaires were distributed and 285 returned responses, 9 responses were not usable due to missing information. Thus, a total of 276 responses were used using structural equation modeling with Smartpls 3.0. Results - The results showed that organizational justice had positive significant effects on positive emotion and job satisfaction. Job satisfaction had negative a significant effect on turnover intention. And negative emotion had positive significant effect on turnover intention. Conclusions - The results of this study provide some implications. If employees feel that the franchise headquarters is fair about the methods and procedures of decision making, resource allocation, information sharing, etc., it means that employees feel better. If the franchise's decision-making processes and methods and results are transparently disclosed and processed in accordance with the internal rules of the company, the employees will be able to fully understand and accept them. The results of this study also show that positive and negative emotions of service-based franchise employees have different effects on job attitude and organizational behavior. In particular, when negative emotions of employees are passed on to others and the results are negative, employees may feel that they are disoriented or wrong. Therefore, the franchise headquarters should try to inspire employees' sense of organizational community, and should pay attention to how to relieve the job stress and the fair distribution of work and rewards.

• The Journal of Bigdata
• /
• v.2 no.2
• /
• pp.57-66
• /
• 2017

Companies has been investing enormous resources in promotion as the market keeps changing rapidly. Therefore, there are growing needs to measure the impact of a promotion on revenue growth. To investigate the effect of promotion in franchise food service industry, this study empirically analyzed text data from Twitter, one of the dominant social network services. Our findings show that a gap between promotions, promotion duration, and season have a significant influence on a volume of twitter buzz, which represents a promotion effect in our study. Next, we tried to analyze the reason why those factors were related to the promotion effect. Finally, we suggested promotion strategies related to each influential factor depending on types of business in food service industry.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
• /
• v.2 no.2
• /
• pp.111-133
• /
• 2011

Marketing trend made change quickly to meet consumers' characteristics in the era of rapid change. This study examined characteristics of storytelling by using literature and material that was thought to be important, and inspected not only effects of storytelling upon brand images of enterprises but also success factors of storytelling marketing. And, the study investigated actual use of the factors by case study at home and abroad to give directions of storytelling marketing of successful catering franchise.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
• /
• v.10 no.3
• /
• pp.7-12
• /
• 2019

Purpose - This study examines the status of franchises and qualifications for franchising business, examines the franchising qualifications focusing on overseas cases, and suggests policy directions for strengthening the qualifications of franchising business. In order to achieve these purposes, the study reviewed the cases of USA, China, Australia, and United Kingdom franchising business law. Literature Review - According to the Fair Trade Commission, franchise is defined as a transactional relationship in which a franchiser provides certain support and education to franchisees in order to sell their goods and services more effectively. In addition, a franchise is a legally and financially independent business of franchisers and franchisees, and according to the concept of affiliates, it is necessary to define a franchise as a product and service marketing based on close and continuous collaboration. A franchiser can be defined as a company with the ability to develop a franchise system, create sustainable value based on it, and replicate "KNOW-HOW" to sellers. Case Study - This study examined the requirements for establishing a franchiser in the United States, China, Australia, and United Kingdom. In most countries, the requirements of franchisers must be operated for at least one year, which means that education, manual production, and continuity of stores should be checked. Suggestion - Based on Korea's population density and consumption sales index, we propose a screening system that registers through 2 + 1 systems, which require two stores to be operated for more than a year, by dividing Korea's commercial rights into two and a screening system instead of simple registration. In the case of a small franchisors, at least one franchsing retail store must be operated for at least one year, which should be applied to only one brand.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
• /
• v.11 no.2
• /
• pp.41-51
• /
• 2020

Purpose: Fast food franchise companies are trying a variety of innovative services to increase their competitiveness in response to changes in population composition in the fast food market and rapid changes in consumption trends due to technological development. From this point of view, franchise companies that have focused on offline store operations are providing O2O (offline to online) service as a core service for customer convenience. This new attempt is a strategy to increase loyalty by applying an interaction method based on understanding the characteristics of new generation consumers. However, existing studies are focused on the relationship between O2O service and acceptance, so very little is known about how O2O service affects customer loyalty. Therefore, this study examines the impacts of customer involvement and relative advantages of fast food O2O service on customer brand engagement (cognitive and affective engagement) and store loyalty for MZ(Millennials - Z) generations. Research design, data, and methodology: In order to achieve the purposes of this research, several hypotheses were developed. The data were collected from 247 questionnaires in their 16-30s and were analyzed using SPSS 22.0 and SmartPLS 3.0 program. Measurement model analysis was carried out to assess convergent and discriminant validity. Also, common method bias was tested using the values of VIF (variance inflation factor). The hypotheses was tested using structural equation modeling. Result: First, involvement has a positive effect on cognitive and affective engagement. Second, relative advantages have has a positive effect on cognitive and affective engagement. Third, cognitive influences affective engagement. Finally, both cognitive and affective engagement affect store loyalty, but affective engagement has a stronger effect on store loyalty than cognitive engagement. Conclusions: In the process of consumer-brand interaction, it was confirmed that store loyalty was influenced by cognitive and affective engagement sequentially. However, the results show that affective engagement has a relatively stronger on store loyalty than cognitive engagement. Therefore, it is necessary to establish an O2O service strategy to maintain long-term loyal customers by inducing cognitive participation with high-involved consumer, as well as affective interaction, in order to obtain new customers and increase customer loyalty.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
• /
• v.12 no.4
• /
• pp.13-23
• /
• 2021

Purpose: This study aimed to derive clues for the franchise industry to overcome difficulties such as various legal regulations and social responsibility demands and to continuously develop by analyzing the research trends related to franchises published in Korea. Research design, data and methodology: As a result of searching for 'franchise' in ScienceON, abstracts were collected from papers published in domestic academic journals from 1994 to June 2021. Keywords were extracted from the abstracts of 1,110 valid papers, and after preprocessing, keyword analysis, TF-IDF analysis, and topic modeling using LDA algorithm, along with trend analysis of the top 20 words in TF-IDF by year group was carried out using the R-package. Results: As a result of keyword analysis, it was found that businesses and brands were the subjects of research related to franchises, and interest in service and satisfaction was considerable, and food and coffee were prominently studied as industries. As a result of TF-IDF calculation, it was found that brand, satisfaction, franchisor, and coffee were ranked at the top. As a result of LDA-based topic modeling, a total of 12 topics including "growth strategy" were derived and visualized with LDAvis. On the other hand, the areas of Topic 1 (growth strategy) and Topic 9 (organizational culture), Topic 4 (consumption experience) and Topic 6 (contribution and loyalty), Topic 7 (brand image) and Topic 10 (commercial area) overlap significantly. Finally, the trend analysis results for the top 20 keywords with high TF-IDF showed that 10 keywords such as quality, brand, food, and trust would be more utilized overall. Conclusions: Through the results of this study, the direction of interest in the franchise industry was confirmed, and it was found that it was necessary to find a clue for continuous growth through research in more diverse fields. And it was also considered an important finding to suggest a technique that can supplement the problems of topic trend analysis. Therefore, the results of this study show that researchers will gain significant insights from the perspectives related to the selection of research topics, and practitioners from the perspectives related to future franchise changes.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
• /
• v.13 no.2
• /
• pp.1-15
• /
• 2022

Purpose: The globalization of the Korean restaurant franchise industry differs from the business performance of enhancing the brand image and customers' intention to revisit depending on the degree of localization marketing. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the extent to which the localization marketing activities of overseas Korean restaurant franchise companies affect the customer's perception. This study aims to investigate the effects of localization marketing (Localized Menu, Localized Price, Localized Service Experience, Localized Promotion, Localized Physical Environment) of Korean restaurant franchise companies on customer revisit intention. Research design, data, and methodology: For this study, 150 questionnaires using local Korean restaurants in Beijing, China, were analyzed using SPSS Ver.21 and AMOS Ver.22. Result: It was confirmed that the localized menu, localized service experience, and localized physical environment all affect the intention to revisit customers. Based on these verification results, if overseas franchises fully recognize localization marketing, which is an important factor for local business success, and establish localization strategies, they can gain an edge in competition with local Korean restaurants or restaurant franchises founded by locals. There may be a higher probability that However, it was found that localization price and localization promotion had no mediating effect of brand image between revisit intention and revisit intention. It was found that it had no effect on the degree of inquiry and had a negative effect. Conclusions: Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been many changes in the domestic and overseas food service industry over the past two years. Therefore, in future research, it is necessary to study the localization of overseas Korean restaurant franchise companies that are more multidimensionally subdivided. Various measures of customized localization marketing for optimal regional characteristics should be developed and applied to enhance customer revisiting and brand image of Korean restaurant franchise companies entering overseas. In the future, this study will be meaningful data for the establishment of localization marketing (Localized Menu, Localized Price, Localized Service Experience, Localized Promotion, Localized Physical Environment) strategies for Korean restaurant franchise companies that consider overseas expansion or have already entered.