• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.61-73
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• 2011

Supermarket Franchising, as a relatively new mode of retail business, is often regarded as one of the two hallmarks of the "Modern Logistics Revolution". After more than ten years of development, franchise supermarkets have been a rising force in retail business in China. As a product of a highly-developed commercial economy, franchise supermarkets mainly deals in foodstuffs and other daily necessities, featuring low cost, high turnover rate, low prices and diversified inventory. Propelled by the conveniences that come with open shelves and self-service shopping, franchise supermarkets have been growing very rapidly and the rise of many franchise supermarket brands bears testimony to its growth potential and profitability. Meanwhile, in the backdrop of this boom, some franchise supermarkets are going bankrupt. This paper analyzes the current status of franchise supermarkets and some factors bearing on their core competencies, so as to close the competitiveness gap with international retail giants.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.29-36
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• 2015

The paper examines the antecedents of acceptance of social networking sites in retail franchise and restaurant businesses. The success of retail franchise and restaurant business operators via social networking sites depends not only on organizational benefits but also on their behavioral intentions of using it. Three hundred and twenty four samples collected from South Korean retail franchise and restaurant employees are analyzed using factor analysis, structural equation model techniques and one-way analysis of variance. The results of the study identify the three constructs of organizational benefits, perceived tangible assets and perceived intangible assets as for important antecedents to accept social networking sites for their business use. Moreover, higher position employees tend to have more favorable perception of tangible assets and acceptance of social networking sites for their business use.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.36-49
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• 2024

Article 79 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act mandates franchise headquarters with over 200 franchises to implement industrial accident prevention measures. Notably, the franchise business information provision system designates restaurants and wholesale/retail as the primary categories for information disclosure, with convenience stores classified as secondary. This study aims to identify law-regulated franchise headquarters and franchises and analyze industrial accidents within these sectors. Furthermore, it seeks to investigate adverse risk factors for individual processes across major industries. Pertinent franchise headquarters and franchises were discerned using the Fair Trade Commission's business information system. Data regarding the status of industrial accidents, as published by the Ministry of Employment and Labor, was leveraged in the analysis of industrial accidents. Additionally, a survey was conducted to derive detrimental factors for each process in major industries. The inquiry revealed a total of 7 wholesale and retail franchise headquarters subject to the law, along with 126 within the restaurant industry. Overall, there were 50,488 franchises in the wholesale and retail sector, and 71,283 in the restaurant business. Risk factors and improvement measures for industrial processes were determined for five industries: convenience stores, Korean food restaurants, coffee places, pizza eateries, and chicken vendors. Locating the currently developed safety and health program establishment guide proves to be challenging. Moreover, utilizing it can be difficult due to the industry-specific content, further complicated by the prevalence of franchise stores featuring numerous small businesses. Therefore, this study highlights the imperative need to develop guidelines that incorporate preventive measures tailored to each industry.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.130-143
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• 2012

Franchise store retailing is taking on ever greater roles in business and commerce in China. The diverse product range, small-batch order, high frequency and time-specific requirements inherent in retail logistics make it the most complicated of all categories of logistics. In franchise store retailing, expanding business scales make trans-regional development a trend. Without a well-functioning logistic system, the standardized delivery of products would be held back, impacting trans-regional development strategy and operational costs. Therefore, the efficiency of franchise store retailing largely depends on logistical efficiency. The integrated and streamlined management of franchise stores depends in large measure on their logistical centers. As such, logistical centers constitute the key link and bears on core competitiveness in franchise store retailing. This thesis begins with an analysis of the current developments and four basic logistical models of franchise store retailing in China, proceeds to summarize developmental trends as well as focal issues and proposes an efficiency enhancing plan.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.1-20
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• 2015

Home Meal Replacement (HMR) products are ready-to-eat or pre-cooked food products that are consumed at daily home. HMR market has grown rapidly due to societal changes: increases in female social activities, silver population, and one-person households. Consumption channels of HMR can be classified into take-out, delivery, and retail. In Korean HMR market, retail sector is largely growing, but companies are focusing their business on the home delivery sector. Moreover, franchise companies are expanding their areal coverage in the HMR market based on their multi-unit strategy. However, more research on the HMR market is needed as existing studies are limited in conceptualization, classification, and processed food from malls or home-shopping channels. Therefore, we conducted the efficiency analysis on Gukseonsaeng, one of franchises that applied the take-out channel, using DEA method. According to the research on 29 franchisees of Gukseonsaeng, 77.9% of input appeared inefficient for technical efficiency, while 53.3% of input appeared inefficient for scale efficiency. Thus, we found that franchises of Gukseonsaeng are structured in increasing returns to scale (IRS), so enhancing efficiency by expanding scales need to be implemented.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.203-217
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• 2016

This paper explores the distribution of the retail coffee franchise stores in Seoul using geostatistical analyses. The fact that lots of coffee stores are concentrated in the central area-Jongno and Jung-gu and commercial area-Gangnam and Seocho shows that the size of the floating population and potential customers is one of main drivers for making decisions on the locations of new stores. Except these 4 districts, the number of stores and population exhibit a positive correlation. By extracting the information on the 6 large coffee franchises store locations, we calculate the both haversine distances between stores of the same franchise and between stores of different franchises. We then empirically test the sitting and marketing strategies of Starbucks, Ediya, and Paik-Dabang using distance distributions. Significant pairs of Starbucks stores located within 100m confirm the sitting strategy of Starbucks which opens additional stores at crossways, stations, near shopping malls or other business zones though there already exist Starbucks stores. Meanwhile considerable portion of Ediya stores are found near Starbucks stores, which coincides with the sitting strategy of Ediya. We also find that Paik-Dabang that uses the low cost strategy has its stores open relatively farther than other franchises from Starbucks stores.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.47-51
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• 2017

Purpose - The purpose of the study was to find out factors having influence upon management of franchise convenience stores being distribution business by interview with franchisees in accordance with Delphi method and to investigate marketing strategy of increase income. Research design, data, and methodology - This study investigated not only franchisees but also head office's franchise consultants of convenience stores carefully by Delta technique to suggest actual solutions of practice and to be different from precedent studies. Delphi method's interview and questionnaire were used to investigate performance of franchisees. 120 franchisees were interviewed to consist of men and women. Results - FC visited franchise stores to investigate: Franchisees thought of keeping of exact information on commodity information and sales promotion events, and admitted of franchiser's effort of growth and development of stores and improper visit frequency of stores and low effort of solving of difficulty of franchisees. Conclusions - More than 80% of the franchisees cognized more than 70% of performance upon request of ordering from headquarters: Not only franchisees but also headquarters need to lessen gap of difference of cognition. Franchise headquarters was thought to give services below than common level, and service manual and operation manual were thought to be high. Headquarters need to give practical support service.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.17 no.8
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• pp.67-76
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• 2019

Purpose - This research examined whether entrepreneurial proclivity of retail employees affects job engagement and satisfaction, which are job-related positive aspects; and whether job engagement affects job satisfaction. Research design, data, and methodology - To accomplish this purpose, data were collected for 224 retail employees working in the distribution industry in the Republic of Korea. Reliability, validity, and hypotheses were tested through structural equation modeling, and mediating effects of job engagement between entrepreneurial proclivity and job satisfaction were verified through the bootstrap method by using the process model. Results - The results show that innovativeness and progressiveness in entrepreneurial proclivity positively affected job engagement and job satisfaction, but risk-taking did not affect either job engagement or job satisfaction. Also, this research confirmed that job engagement positively affects job satisfaction. Conclusions - This study contributes to the retail literature by applying the concept of entrepreneurial proclivity in the retail employee context. This study puts forward empirical evidence that identifies the effect of entrepreneurial proclivity as a job resource that influences job engagement and job satisfaction in the JD-R model. Thus, this study surmounts the limitation of prior studies by examining entrepreneurial proclivity from the aspect of retail employees.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.22 no.9
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• pp.73-84
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• 2024

Purpose: This study aims to comprehensively analyze what small business owners experience in relation to stressors, consequences, coping methods, and situational factors. Research design, data and methodology: In this study, qualitative research methodology was used to conduct in-depth interviews with 15 small business owners who started franchise convenience stores, and classify stressors and consequences, coping methods, and situational factors based on the transactional theory of stress. Results: The results of this study are as follows. First, stressors were classified into challenge stressor and hindrance stressor. Second, stress coping methods were classified into problem-focused and emotion-focused coping methods. Among them, SBOs mainly used problem-focused coping methods. Third, consequences were classified into physiological, emotional, and behavioral tension. Lastly, the moderating factorsin the process of stress coping were resilience, social support, and positive traits. Conclusion: Theoretically, the stressors and coping methods that small business owners experience during the start-up process were confirmed from an integrated theoretical perspective. Practically, building trust relationships with SBOs and providing realistic job introductions are required at the head office level, and on the individual side, efforts are required to strike an appropriate balance between behavioral and emotional stress coping and to form a consensus with family members.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.107-121
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• 2008

As to more efficiently manage the inventory in the retail supply chain and to meet the customer demand in a timely manner, vendor-managed inventory (VMI) has been widely accepted, which manages inventory in the retail supply chain via sharing information and collaborating with the retailers. Applying VMI generates vendor-managed inventory/distribution problem (VMIDP), which involves inventory management for both the vendor and the retailers, and the design of vehicle routes for delivery, to minimize the total operating cost in the supply chain. In this paper, we suggest a mixed integer programming (MIP) model to obtain the optimal solution for VMIDP in a two-echelon retail supply chain, and develop an efficient heuristic based on the operating principles of the MIP model. To evaluate the performance of the heuristic, its solution was compared with the one of the MIP model on a total of twenty seven test problems. As a result, the heuristic found optimal solutions on seven problems in a significantly reduced time, and generated a 4.3% error rate of total cost in average for all problems. The heuristic is applied to the case problem of the local famous franchise company together with GIS, showing that it is capable of providing a solution efficiently in a relatively short time even in the real world situation.