• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.61-118
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• 2008

The purpose of this research is to construct research framework for international franchising based on existing literature and to identify research components in the framework. Franchise can be defined as management styles that allow franchisee use various management assets of franchisor in order to make or sell product or service. It can be divided into product distribution franchise that is designed to sell products and business format franchise that is designed for running it as business whatever its form is. International franchising can be defined as a way of internationalization of franchisor to foreign country by providing its business format or package to franchisee of host country. International franchising is growing fast for last four decades but academic research on this is quite limited. Especially in Korea, research about international franchising is carried out on by case study format with single case or empirical study format with survey based on domestic franchise theory. Therefore, this paper tries to review existing literature on international franchising research, providing research framework, and then stimulating new research on this field. International franchising research components include motives and environmental factors for decision of expanding to international franchising, entrance modes and development plan for international franchising, contracts and management strategy of international franchising, and various performance measures from different perspectives. First, motives of international franchising are fee collection from franchisee. Also it provides easier way to expanding to foreign country. The other motives including increase total sales volume, occupying better strategic position, getting quality resources, and improving efficiency. Environmental factors that facilitating international franchising encompasses economic condition, trend, and legal or political factors in host and/or home countries. In addition, control power and risk management capability of franchisor plays critical role in successful franchising contract. Final decision to enter foreign country via franchising is determined by numerous factors like history, size, growth, competitiveness, management system, bonding capability, industry characteristics of franchisor. After deciding to enter into foreign country, franchisor needs to set entrance modes of international franchising. Within contractual mode, there are master franchising and area developing franchising, licensing, direct franchising, and joint venture. Theories about entrance mode selection contain concepts of efficiency, knowledge-based approach, competence-based approach, agent theory, and governance cost. The next step after entrance decision is operation strategy. Operation strategy starts with selecting a target city and a target country for franchising. In order to finding, screening targets, franchisor needs to collect information about candidates. Critical information includes brand patent, commercial laws, regulations, market conditions, country risk, and industry analysis. After selecting a target city in target country, franchisor needs to select franchisee, in other word, partner. The first important criteria for selecting partners are financial credibility and capability, possession of real estate. And cultural similarity and knowledge about franchisor and/or home country are also recognized as critical criteria. The most important element in operating strategy is legal document between franchisor and franchisee with home and host countries. Terms and conditions in legal documents give objective information about characteristics of franchising agreement for academic research. Legal documents have definitions of terminology, territory and exclusivity, agreement of term, initial fee, continuing fees, clearing currency, and rights about sub-franchising. Also, legal documents could have terms about softer elements like training program and operation manual. And harder elements like law competent court and terms of expiration. Next element in operating strategy is about product and service. Especially for business format franchising, product/service deliverable, benefit communicators, system identifiers (architectural features), and format facilitators are listed for product/service strategic elements. Another important decision on product/service is standardization vs. customization. The rationale behind standardization is cost reduction, efficiency, consistency, image congruence, brand awareness, and competitiveness on price. Also standardization enables large scale R&D and innovative change in management style. Another element in operating strategy is control management. The simple way to control franchise contract is relying on legal terms, contractual control system. There are other control systems, administrative control system and ethical control system. Contractual control system is a coercive source of power, but franchisor usually doesn't want to use legal power since it doesn't help to build up positive relationship. Instead, self-regulation is widely used. Administrative control system uses control mechanism from ordinary work relationship. Its main component is supporting activities to franchisee and communication method. For example, franchisor provides advertising, training, manual, and delivery, then franchisee follows franchisor's direction. Another component is building franchisor's brand power. The last research element is performance factor of international franchising. Performance elements can be divided into franchisor's performance and franchisee's performance. The conceptual performance measures of franchisor are simple but not easy to obtain objectively. They are profit, sale, cost, experience, and brand power. The performance measures of franchisee are mostly about benefits of host country. They contain small business development, promotion of employment, introduction of new business model, and level up technology status. There are indirect benefits, like increase of tax, refinement of corporate citizenship, regional economic clustering, and improvement of international balance. In addition to those, host country gets socio-cultural change other than economic effects. It includes demographic change, social trend, customer value change, social communication, and social globalization. Sometimes it is called as westernization or McDonaldization of society. In addition, the paper reviews on theories that have been frequently applied to international franchising research, such as agent theory, resource-based view, transaction cost theory, organizational learning theory, and international expansion theories. Resource based theory is used in strategic decision based on resources, like decision about entrance and cooperation depending on resources of franchisee and franchisor. Transaction cost theory can be applied in determination of mutual trust or satisfaction of franchising players. Agent theory tries to explain strategic decision for reducing problem caused by utilizing agent, for example research on control system in franchising agreements. Organizational Learning theory is relatively new in franchising research. It assumes organization tries to maximize performance and learning of organization. In addition, Internalization theory advocates strategic decision of direct investment for removing inefficiency of market transaction and is applied in research on terms of contract. And oligopolistic competition theory is used to explain various entry modes for international expansion. Competency theory support strategic decision of utilizing key competitive advantage. Furthermore, research methodologies including qualitative and quantitative methodologies are suggested for more rigorous international franchising research. Quantitative research needs more real data other than survey data which is usually respondent's judgment. In order to verify theory more rigorously, research based on real data is essential. However, real quantitative data is quite hard to get. The qualitative research other than single case study is also highly recommended. Since international franchising has limited number of applications, scientific research based on grounded theory and ethnography study can be used. Scientific case study is differentiated with single case study on its data collection method and analysis method. The key concept is triangulation in measurement, logical coding and comparison. Finally, it provides overall research direction for international franchising after summarizing research trend in Korea. International franchising research in Korea has two different types, one is for studying Korean franchisor going overseas and the other is for Korean franchisee of foreign franchisor. Among research on Korean franchisor, two common patterns are observed. First of all, they usually deal with success story of one franchisor. The other common pattern is that they focus on same industry and country. Therefore, international franchise research needs to extend their focus to broader subjects with scientific research methodology as well as development of new theory.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.33-47
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• 2019

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to classify and analyze existing studies from various angles through systematic literature review of how human resources development has been researched in the domestic franchise business. These studies are intended to suggest the direction in which human resource development research should be conducted in the future in the franchise business. Research design, data, and methodology - This study is based on systematic literature review methodology. It has gone through the process of subject language setting, literature search routing, search term selection, literature selection, literature classification and literature analysis. The systematic literature review identified 59 peer-reviewed dissertations and scientific journal publications on the subject of HRD in Korea franchise business. Result - This study analyzed by research methods, research industries, research population and dependent variable using the systematic review process. The literature studied in the 2000s mainly led to research on education and training of franchise employees in beauty franchise business. In the literature studied since 2010, human resources development was mainly studied in the supervisor in the restaurant franchise business, and in the study of competence rather than education and training. According to the research methods, statistical methods were mostly relatively simple, such as t-test or one-way distribution analysis until the 2000s, and after 2010, in-depth and structural studies using multiple return analysis, structural method analysis, path analysis, multi-dimensional scale analysis, AHP, etc were conducted. When classified by study dependant, early research until the 2000s focused on the study of education and training, which is an independent variable, on the satisfaction of education programs, job satisfaction, and immersion. On the other hand, studies conducted since 2010 have produced more complex results using various medium variants, and those related to management performance and relationship performance have been mainly studied, rather than the satisfaction of the education itself. Conclusions - While the domestic franchise business is expanding in terms of quantity, such as the number of franchises and franchises, the development in terms of quality for the joint growth of franchises and franchisees is still lacking. In order for the franchisee to continue to grow with each other, the franchisee must identify and develop their current performance or expected capabilities through capacity modeling at various targets and levels.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.75-89
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• 2007

The start point of a franchise system such as Lotteria was in 1979. Since 1990, the franchise systems in Korea have rapidly spread over all industry types. As 'Franchise Law' was enforced in 2002, the expansion of a franchise picked up its' speed. The barbers and beauty parlors business has the same expansion trend. However, there was no study about the franchise systems in the barbers and beauty parlors business. The purpose of this study was to find the goodness of fit of the structured equation model proposed and identify the significances of relationships in the variables of justice perceptions, trust, satisfactions, business performances, switching barriers, switching cost etc. This study tries to find a solution for a good development between franchisor and franchisee in the barbers and beauty parlors business in Korea. The theoretical considerations about justice of this study is limited in reciprocal relation justice and procedure justice. And it did make simplify for trust, satisfaction, business performance, switching barrier. And switching barrier did measure as dimension of switching coot. From October 26, 2005 to October 29, this study collected 250 survey questionnaires from the franchisees located in Seoul, Busan, Daegu, Ulsan, and Keoyng-Nam. In analyses of using SPSS Windows 11.0 and LISREL 8.14, this study used 208 cases because 48 cases did not response appropriately. Tn conclusions. reciprocal justice perception and procedure justice jointly determined trust. Secondly, reciprocal justice perception significantly determined satisfaction. Procedure justice perception negatively determined satisfaction, but this relationship was not significant. Thirdly, reciprocal justice perception positively influenced business performance, and procedure justice negatively influenced business performance, but the last relationship was not significant Fourthly, trust positively significantly influenced satisfaction and business performance. Fifthly, satisfaction positively influenced business performance and true determined switching barrier positively. This study shows following: firstly, a composition concept did make structural relationship and secondly, a reciprocal relation justice of a franchisor did appear as an important variable and it gives positive influence to trust, satisfactions, business performance, switching barriers of the franchisees.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.65-84
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to review the theories and cases of performance sharing in the franchise industry to present a method for more effective franchise performance-sharing. To that end, this study reviewed the theory on resource dependence and the theory on inequality to describe the performance-sharing between the franchisor and the franchisee and their relationship. It also looked at the cases of a week-in cooler system at 'Beer Market', the allocation of fees for alcoholic beverage sales to franchisees, the scholarship program of 'Onigiri and Ikyudon' and 'Bonsamo' which is a franchisees' committee for Bonjuk to introduce examples of performance-sharing. Through a theoretical review and case review, this study presents five types of methods for performance-sharing. First, 'the sharing of core competence by the franchise company; second, 'the establishment of a royalty culture'; third, 'scientific analysis of markets and establishment of a revenue forecast system'; fourth, 'reinforced financial support from the franchisor'; and lastly, 'the positive application of franchisees' committees'. Such methods are expected to provide a groundwork for mutual benefit and co-prosperity between franchisor and franchisee.

• 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.

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

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.152-172
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• 2011

This study aims to analyze the effect of franchisor's pre-open support services on franchisee's relationship quality and performance in foodservice franchise system. The analysis data was collected from 500 franchisees located in Seoul and Gyeonggi-do of Republic of Korea. The finding are as followings: firstly, the factors of information providing, market researching, interior and equipment supporting, education and training supporting, sale and promotion supporting, and legal supporting influence positively franchisee's satisfaction. Second, regarding relationship among relationship quality, satisfaction positively influences trust and commitment, and trust positively influence commitment. Third, relationship quality influences positively both financial and non-financial performance.

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.259-265
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• 2017

This study reviewed the existing studies in order to set up a strategy that can achieve the trust and business performance of the franchisers, who are actually operating franchised business, breaking from the research trend centered around franchise headquarters and added the factors of the franchise headquarters' strategy for expanding franchises, including word-of-mouth communication and advertising & publicity and added the exercise of recruitment agency outsourcing, flagship store, recently utilized often as preceding variables to verify the causal relation between the trust of the franchiser and the business performance of the franchise. The implications of this study, it can be concluded that the government authority for the attraction of healthy franchises can continuously attract franchises and enter the market can continuously attract franchises by increasing the trust of the franchises, and powerfully investing and managing them for the effort through word-of-mouth marketing. It is expected that this study will be helpful in the establishment of a business strategy for forming a continuous relationship as well as the franchise head office's strategy for the recruitment of new franchises.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.1-25
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• 2012

The studies of franchise companies are underway with the development of the franchise industry. Franchisor performance, franchisee performance, and relationship characteristics on performance, financial performance, non-financial performance, including research on the topic or purpose of the franchise performance and related discussions from a variety of perspectives have been proposed. Presented so comprehensive a discussion regarding the existing performance of the franchise and qualitative aspects such as satisfaction, long-term orientation to emphasize the limits. Therefore, this study was conducted by the franchise company's performance than the need to be clearly presented. Propose a quantifiable and quantified to reflect the characteristics of the franchise quantitative performance indicators. Franchise contract management systematically analyze the status of the enterprise contract management(ECM) and proposed contract management, leverage as an indicator for a more quantitative analysis. Contract management leverage is the franchise as an indicator of the merchant and the growth of the contract showing any significant changes in the coming changes in the Franchisee's sales growth target analysis results, notable implications could be found. This study are new methodology for the practical dimensions of performance of franchise companies.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.37-63
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• 2012

In franchise business, exclusive sales territory (sometimes EST in table) protection is a very important issue from an economic, social and political point of view. It affects the growth and survival of both franchisor and franchisee and often raises issues of social and political conflicts. When franchisee is not familiar with related laws and regulations, franchisor has high chance to utilize it. Exclusive sales territory protection by the manufacturer and distributors (wholesalers or retailers) means sales area restriction by which only certain distributors have right to sell products or services. The distributor, who has been granted exclusive sales territories, can protect its own territory, whereas he may be prohibited from entering in other regions. Even though exclusive sales territory is a quite critical problem in franchise business, there is not much rigorous research about the reason, results, evaluation, and future direction based on empirical data. This paper tries to address this problem not only from logical and nomological validity, but from empirical validation. While we purse an empirical analysis, we take into account the difficulties of real data collection and statistical analysis techniques. We use a set of disclosure document data collected by Korea Fair Trade Commission, instead of conventional survey method which is usually criticized for its measurement error. Existing theories about exclusive sales territory can be summarized into two groups as shown in the table below. The first one is about the effectiveness of exclusive sales territory from both franchisor and franchisee point of view. In fact, output of exclusive sales territory can be positive for franchisors but negative for franchisees. Also, it can be positive in terms of sales but negative in terms of profit. Therefore, variables and viewpoints should be set properly. The other one is about the motive or reason why exclusive sales territory is protected. The reasons can be classified into four groups - industry characteristics, franchise systems characteristics, capability to maintain exclusive sales territory, and strategic decision. Within four groups of reasons, there are more specific variables and theories as below. Based on these theories, we develop nine hypotheses which are briefly shown in the last table below with the results. In order to validate the hypothesis, data is collected from government (FTC) homepage which is open source. The sample consists of 1,896 franchisors and it contains about three year operation data, from 2006 to 2008. Within the samples, 627 have exclusive sales territory protection policy and the one with exclusive sales territory policy is not evenly distributed over 19 representative industries. Additional data are also collected from another government agency homepage, like Statistics Korea. Also, we combine data from various secondary sources to create meaningful variables as shown in the table below. All variables are dichotomized by mean or median split if they are not inherently dichotomized by its definition, since each hypothesis is composed by multiple variables and there is no solid statistical technique to incorporate all these conditions to test the hypotheses. This paper uses a simple chi-square test because hypotheses and theories are built upon quite specific conditions such as industry type, economic condition, company history and various strategic purposes. It is almost impossible to find all those samples to satisfy them and it can't be manipulated in experimental settings. However, more advanced statistical techniques are very good on clean data without exogenous variables, but not good with real complex data. The chi-square test is applied in a way that samples are grouped into four with two criteria, whether they use exclusive sales territory protection or not, and whether they satisfy conditions of each hypothesis. So the proportion of sample franchisors which satisfy conditions and protect exclusive sales territory, does significantly exceed the proportion of samples that satisfy condition and do not protect. In fact, chi-square test is equivalent with the Poisson regression which allows more flexible application. As results, only three hypotheses are accepted. When attitude toward the risk is high so loyalty fee is determined according to sales performance, EST protection makes poor results as expected. And when franchisor protects EST in order to recruit franchisee easily, EST protection makes better results. Also, when EST protection is to improve the efficiency of franchise system as a whole, it shows better performances. High efficiency is achieved as EST prohibits the free riding of franchisee who exploits other's marketing efforts, and it encourages proper investments and distributes franchisee into multiple regions evenly. Other hypotheses are not supported in the results of significance testing. Exclusive sales territory should be protected from proper motives and administered for mutual benefits. Legal restrictions driven by the government agency like FTC could be misused and cause mis-understandings. So there need more careful monitoring on real practices and more rigorous studies by both academicians and practitioners.