• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.45-60
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• 2020

Propose: The expansion of the delivery market in franchise business is a positive means of advertising and promotion for franchisees and contributes to substantial sales growth for stores. However, unrestricted and uncontrolled delivery sales and business activity of franchisee directly lead to encroachment of business territory between franchisees, resulting in increased operating costs of franchisees and conflicts between franchisees over rights and interests on franchise business. Moreover, in relation to the restrictions on the opening of competitors, it is incapacitating the law intent of prohibiting unfair encroachment of business territory, in the issue of the Fair Franchise Act in regard to guarantee of exclusive sales and business activity rights of franchisee. This study aims to point out major problems arising out of franchisee's infinite competition on delivery sales and business activity that are not restricted or controlled and then suggest legal supplements, policy tasks, and practical implications for improvement on the issues. Literature Review: In franchising business transactions, vertical restraints are associated with the exclusive territory establishment, control of transaction area, restriction of intangible sales and business activity of franchisee. Therefore, in the franchise business, it is necessary to take positive interpretation and application on e-commerce, the area of e-commerce, and delivery trading area and find proper and practical ways, by virtue of constructive attitude of each actor, to reduce the encroachment of business territory and various conflicts caused by unrestricted delivery trading area. Conclusion and suggestion: The finding shows that unrestricted or uncontrolled delivery sales and business activity of franchisees cause encroachment of business territory and many conflicts among franchisees. And this matters also weaken the legislation of the law on the protection of the business territory and can be negative factors that disrupt the protection of identity and sound development of the franchise industry in the long run. Therefore, in the franchise business, it is necessary to take positive interpretation and application on e-commerce, the area of e-commerce, and delivery trading area and find proper and practical ways, by virtue of constructive attitude of each actor, to reduce the encroachment of business territory and various conflicts caused by unrestricted delivery trading area.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.49-71
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• 2010

Franchise businesses in South Korea have contributed to economic growth and job creation, and its growth potential remains very high. However, despite such virtues, domestic franchise businesses face many problems such as the instability of franchisor's business structure and weak financial conditions. To solve these problems, the government enacted legislation and strengthened franchise related laws. However, the strengthening of laws regulating franchisors had many side effects that interrupted the development of the franchise business. For example, legal regulations regarding franchisors have had the effect of suppressing the franchisor's leadership activities (e.g. activities such as the ability to advocate the franchisor's policies and strategies to the franchisees, in order to facilitate change and innovation). One of the main goals of the franchise business is to build cooperation between the franchisor and the franchisee for their combined success. However, franchisees can refuse to follow the franchisor's strategies because of the current state of franchise-related law and government policy. The purpose of this study to explore the effects of franchisor's leadership style on franchisee's commitment in a franchise system. We classified leadership styles according to the path-goal theory (House & Mitchell, 1974), and it was hypothesized and tested that the four leadership styles proposed by the path-goal theory (i.e. directive, supportive, participative and achievement-oriented leadership) have different effects on franchisee's commitment. Another purpose of this study to explore the how the level of franchisee's self-efficacy influences both the franchisor's leadership style and franchisee's commitment in a franchise system. Results of the present study are expected to provide important theoretical and practical implications as to the role of franchisor's leadership style, as restricted by government regulations and the franchisee's self-efficacy, which could be needed to improve the quality of the long-term relationship between the franchisor and franchisee. Quoted by Northouse(2007), one problem regarding the investigation of leadership is that there are almost as many different definitions of leadership as there are people who have tried to define it. But despite the multitude of ways in which leadership has been conceptualized, the following components can be identified as central to the phenomenon: (a) leadership is a process, (b) leadership involves influence, (c) leadership occurs in a group context, and (d) leadership involves goal attainment. Based on these components, in this study leadership is defined as a process whereby franchisor's influences a group of franchisee' to achieve a common goal. Focusing on this definition, the path-goal theory is about how leaders motivate subordinates to accomplish designated goals. Drawing heavily from research on what motivates employees, path-goal theory first appeared in the leadership literature in the early 1970s in the works of Evans (1970), House (1971), House and Dessler (1974), and House and Mitchell (1974). The stated goal of this leadership theory is to enhance employee performance and employee satisfaction by focusing on employee motivation. In brief, path-goal theory is designed to explain how leaders can help subordinates along the path to their goals by selecting specific behaviors that are best suited to subordinates' needs and to the situation in which subordinates are working (Northouse, 2007). House & Mitchell(1974) predicted that although many different leadership behaviors could have been selected to be a part of path-goal theory, this approach has so far examined directive, supportive, participative, and achievement-oriented leadership behaviors. And they suggested that leaders may exhibit any or all of these four styles with various subordinates and in different situations. However, due to restrictive government regulations, franchisors are not in a position to change their leadership style to suit their circumstances. In addition, quoted by Northouse(2007), ssubordinate characteristics determine how a leader's behavior is interpreted by subordinates in a given work context. Many researchers have focused on subordinates' needs for affiliation, preferences for structure, desires for control, and self-perceived level of task ability. In this study, we have focused on the self-perceived level of task ability, namely, the franchisee's self-efficacy. According to Bandura (1977), self-efficacy is chiefly defined as the personal attitude of one's ability to accomplish concrete tasks. Therefore, it is not an indicator of one's actual abilities, but an opinion of the extent of how one can use that ability. Thus, the judgment of maintain franchisee's commitment depends on the situation (e.g., government regulation and policy and leadership style of franchisor) and how it affects one's ability to mobilize resources to deal with the task, so even if people possess the same ability, there may be differences in self-efficacy. Figure 1 illustrates the model investigated in this study. In this model, it was hypothesized that leadership styles would affect the franchisee's commitment, and self-efficacy would moderate the relationship between leadership style and franchisee's commitment. Theoretically, quoted by Northouse(2007), the path-goal approach suggests that leaders need to choose a leadership style that best fits the needs of subordinates and the work they are doing. According to House & Mitchell (1974), the theory predicts that a directive style of leadership is best in situations in which subordinates are dogmatic and authoritarian, the task demands are ambiguous, and the organizational rule and procedures are unclear. In these situations, franchisor's directive leadership complements the work by providing guidance and psychological structure for franchisees. For work that is structured, unsatisfying, or frustrating, path-goal theory suggests that leaders should use a supportive style. Franchisor's Supportive leadership offers a sense of human touch for franchisees engaged in mundane, mechanized activity. Franchisor's participative leadership is considered best when a task is ambiguous because participation gives greater clarity to how certain paths lead to certain goals; it helps subordinates learn what actions leads to what outcome. Furthermore, House & Mitchell(1974) predicts that achievement-oriented leadership is most effective in settings in which subordinates are required to perform ambiguous tasks. Marsh and O'Neill (1984) tested the idea that organizational members' anger and decline in performance is caused by deficiencies in their level of effort and found that self-efficacy promotes accomplishment, decreases stress and negative consequences like depression and emotional instability. Based on the extant empirical findings and theoretical reasoning, we posit positive and strong relationships between the franchisor's leadership styles and the franchisee's commitment. Furthermore, the level of franchisee's self-efficacy was thought to maintain their commitment. The questionnaires sent to participants consisted of the following measures; leadership style was assessed using a 20 item 7-point likert scale developed by Indvik (1985), self-efficacy was assessed using a 24 item 6-point likert scale developed by Bandura (1977), and commitment was assessed using a 6 item 5-point likert scale developed by Morgan & Hunt (1994). Questionnaires were distributed to Korean optical franchisees in Seoul. It took about 20 days to complete the data collection. A total number of 140 questionnaires were returned and complete data were available from 137 respondents. Results of multiple regression analyses testing the relationships between the each of the four styles of leadership shown by the franchisor as independent variables and franchisee's commitment as the dependent variable showed that the relationship between supportive leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.13, p<.001),and the relationship between participative leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.07, p<.001)were significant. However, when participants divided into high and low self-efficacy groups, results of multiple regression analyses showed that only the relationship between achievement-oriented leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.14, p<.001) was significant in the high self-efficacy group. In the low self-efficacy group, the relationship between supportive leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.17, p<.001),and the relationship between participative leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.10, p<.001) were significant. The study focused on the franchisee's self-efficacy in order to explore the possibility that regulation, originally intended to protect the franchisee, may not be the most effective method to maintain the relationships in a franchise business. The key results of the data analysis regarding the moderating role of self-efficacy between leadership behavior style as proposed by path-goal and commitment theory were as follows. First, this study proposed that franchisor should apply the appropriate type of leadership behavior to strengthen the franchisees commitment because the results demonstrated that supportive and participative leadership styles by the franchisors have a positive influence on the franchisee's level of commitment. Second, it is desirable for franchisor to validate the franchisee's efforts, since the franchisee's characteristics such as self-efficacy had a substantial, positive effect on the franchisee's commitment as well as being a meaningful moderator between leadership and commitment. Third, the results as a whole imply that the government should provide institutional support, namely to put the franchisor in a position to clearly identify the characteristics of their franchisees and provide reasonable means to administer the franchisees to achieve the company's goal.

• 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.14 no.7
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• pp.91-100
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• 2016

Purpose - Recently actively growing franchise systems distribution channel system in which franchise headquarter compared with franchise occupies an important place in distribution channel. Due to this, franchise and franchise headquarter are interdependent on task and in this situation the goal they go after, motivation and objective are probably inconsistent. If so, possibility to participate goal setting process or operating activity of opposite side is becoming bigger and in the end conflict may generate. The purpose of this study is to examine the role of the supervisor's attitude and expertise as moderating factors in the relationship between goal-incongruity/coercive power/role-incongruity and the conflict perceived by franchisee. Research design, data and methodology - This study was intended to verify how the supervisor's attitude and expertise as moderating factors in the relationship between goal-incongruity/coercive power/role-incongruity and the conflict perceived by franchisee. In order to achieve the purpose of this study, some study models and hypotheses have been established through theoretical examinations. Then, using these scales, the researcher completed the questionnaire survey. To test our hypotheses, the survey was conducted from March 9, 2016 for 20 days by random sampling, The study was implemented through a descriptive survey method using a self-administered questionnaire. A survey of 124 restaurant franchisee across Seoul and Gyeonggi Province was performed. A total of 124 completed responses were analyzed. In this study, I used SPSS 22.0 to analyze data and did frequency analysis to see demographic, and general features of the respondents; also did exploratory factor analysis to examine the validity of the items of measurement. Factor analysis was first calculated at a minimum, the number of factors, principal component analysis used when variables are committed to maximising the information with (principle component analysis) and the rotation of factors were angry about the great variable factors than 1.0 by applying Varimax rotation. In addition, I used the value of Cronbach's (Alpha) to examine the reliance of questionnaire items, final analysis the reliability factor can be found both high reliability hayeoteumeuro exceeds over 0.6 and did Multiple regression analysis to test hypothesis and also did hierarchical regression analysis to examine moderating effect. Results - To analyze the proposed model, according to the analysis result, it was found that the influence of goal-incongruity, coercive power, and role-incongruity on the perceived conflict of franchisee is moderated by the supervisor's attitude and expertise. That is, the more the supervisor's attitude and expertise were positive, the more the conflicts of the goal-incongruity, coercive power, and role-incongruity were decreased. It also confirmed previous research's finding that goal-incongruity, coercive power, and role-incongruity positively influence on the conflict. Conclusions - According to the results of this research which reduces the conflict of franchise from the in consistent goal; coercive power, and inconsistent role of superiors, it provides very important implications for franchise headquarter which has franchise system and also give them some suggestion about how to recruit superiors and what kind of training may be fit for the superiors.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.219-230
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• 2009

The purpose of this research was to investigate the success factors of the foodservice franchise business. This study examined relevant literatures, set up some hypotheses to solve main questionable consideration and made a corresponding empirical analysis. For the empirical analysis, a questionnaire survey was applied to ttotal 120 franchisers who have operated franchise business around Seoul. The result from the multiple regression model shows that the success of the franchise business is influenced by the operating system, the brand system, the educational system, and the franchisees' activities. As mentioned in the literature review and empirical analysis, it is found that the above mentioned four systems are equally affected by franchisers' success factors. The limits of this study include the fact that it has selected and researched around Seoul and four factors. Future research should be done from the perspective of such factors as culture, economy, region, menu, service and so on.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.11 no.4 s.27
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• pp.118-133
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• 2005

In the management activities of head office in supporting franchisees in domestic food-service enterprises, the raw material supply plays a positive role to support franchisees' operation activity and it comes into conflict with them at the same time. In this paper, I have tried to find out the relationship between raw material supplying and the satisfaction of the franchisees by experimental research in order to research the route of head office's raw material supplying. To sum up the results, it was found out there is no meaningful relationship between the raw material supplying and the franchisees satisfaction (intention to renew the agreement), It indicates it would be more effective for the franchisees to buy the raw materials from the suppliers developed by the franchisees except some key materials in order to reduce the conflicts with the franchisees.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.19-30
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• 2017

Purpose - As environmental issues, along with the growth of companies, are accelerating, social interests in eco-friendly management that requires corporate social role and responsibility are increasing. The eco-friendly management activity reflects the changes in environmental awareness of consumers. Therefore, the eco-friendly images of companies influence consumers, and the establishing of eco-friendly management strategy has become a very important factor in the greenmarket. In this regard, this study examined the impacts of green leadership and environmental attractiveness on strategic environmental marketing, tactical environmental marketing, and environmental performance towards the employees of franchisee headquarters. Research design, data, and methodology - The survey was conducted towards the 800 headquarters among 2,600 brands that are registered with the Fair Trade Commission of Korea by mail. Among the total of 162 questionnaires collected, 7 respondents were excluded for their incompletion, and thus 155 responses were used in this study. The data were analyzed with SPSS 21.0 and SmartPLS 3.0. Frequency analysis was carried out to understand the general characteristics of the subjects, and confirmatory factor analysis to measure the reliability and validity of the measurement. Correlation analysis was conducted to identify the correlation between constructs, and structural equation modeling to examine the structural relationships among the constructs. Result and Conclusions - First, green leadership had a positive impact on strategic environmental marketing, tactical environmental marketing, and environmental performance. Second, environmental attractiveness had a positive effect on strategic environmental marketing, tactical environmental marketing, and environmental performance. Finally, strategic environmental marketing and tactical environmental marketing had positive impacts on environmental performance. This study can be recognized for proposing new perspectives on eco-friendly management strategy for firms to be able to win competitive superiority and performance by embedding awareness of the importance of environmental market and suggesting practical implications on understanding of environmental attractiveness, strategies and tactics of environmental management, and environmental performance in the franchise industry.