• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.101-125
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• 2008

This research suggests an ideal role between franchisee and franchisee for survival and development of the Korean franchise business by identifying causal relationships between entrepreneurship of franchisees and their business performance. Besides, when considering multi-dimensional features of a franchise system, this study aims to show that the market orientation of the franchisee and the relationship commitment between franchisee and franchisee will play an important mediating role to achieve a better business performance. Thus specific causal relationships among sub-dimensional constructs of entrepreneurship and market orientations were investigated. They are innovativeness, risk-taking propensity, pro-activeness, information creation, intelligence generation, intelligence dissemination, response design, response implementation. The results demonstrate that pro-activeness of franchisee plays a crucial role for franchisee's business performance. It was noted that franchisor's market orientation and innovativeness is also important for high market orientation of franchisor. The higher the market orientation of franchisor was, the higher relationship commitment of franchisee was formed. By identifying the mediation effect of relationship commitment and market orientation of franchisor, this paper showed that relationship commitment positively affect the improvement of franchisee's business performance. Above all, it should be noted that this research empirically identified the relationship between franchisee's entrepreneurship and business performance that most of the previous researchers have ignored. Furthermore, the analysis was conducted at sub-dimensional construct level. It is expected that empirical results from this study will be able to provide a meaningful framework and theoretical basis for future research on franchise, entrepreneurship and market orientation.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.41-51
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• 2018

Purpose - In franchise system, how to build the relationship between the franchisor and franchisee through influence strategy is very important, because it affects on the long-term orientation like recontract intentions. Thus, this study examines the effect of mandatory influence strategy on relationship satisfaction, relationship trust, and recontract intentions in the context of food-service franchise industry. This study suggests the guidelines on how franchisor uses their influence strategy on franchisee to maintain and increase the recontract intentions. Research design, data, and methodology - This study examines the structural relationship between mandatory influence strategy, relationship satisfaction, relationship trust, and recontract intentions from the franchisee's perspective. Mandatory influence strategy divide into three sub-dimensions such as request, legalistic plea, threat. In order to test the purposes of this study, research model and hypotheses were developed. Every constructs were measured by multiple items tested and developed in the previous research. Also, the constructs utilized in this research are measured using 7-point scales anchored by "1=strongly disagree" and 7=strongly agree". The data were collected from 496 owner and owner manager franchisees and were analyzed using SPSS 21.0 and Smart PLS 3.0. program. Analysis of frequency was conducted to identify the demographics and general characteristics of the survey subjects. In order to measure the reliability and validity of the measurement tools, confirmatory factor analysis and correlation analysis were conducted and structural model analysis was conducted to verify the proposed research model. Result - The results of this study are as follows. First, this research found that mandatory influence strategy is positively related to relationship satisfaction and relationship trust, but not to recontract intention directly. Second, this research also found that the full mediating role of relationship satisfaction and relationship trust between the mandatory influence strategy and recontract intention. Conclusions - The findings of this research indicate that franchisor should use properly mandatory influence strategy to improve recontract intentions through relationship satisfaction and relationship trust. Due to the nature of food-service franchise industry, which needs high relationship quality, franchisor must manage their franchisee using influence strategy in order to improve satisfaction and trust. If franchisee perceives higher relationship quality, they will show higher intention to recontract. At the end of this paper, limitations and future research directions were suggested.

• 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 Journal of Economics, Marketing and Management
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.27-37
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• 2021

Purpose: By foreshadowing the historical background and cultural influence of Korean food and economic development in China, this paper demonstrates Chinese market entry strategies taken by TheBorn with its company history and CEO's background. Research design, data and methodology: The eclectic paradigm was utilized to analyze ownership, localization, and internalization advantages for TheBorn's first entry into the Chinese market. The research answers how TheBorn could expand its business in the early 2000s while most were skeptical about the globalization of Korean food. Results: First, possessing various restaurant franchises, food patents, and developments, and media use enabled to achieve a strong ownership advantage. Second, the Chinese market is conveniently located in South Korea. Thus, TheBorn could exercise direct management to its overseas restaurant to maintain the food quality and service. Lastly, establishing a sauce manufacturing plant and its branch company accelerated further expansions to other Chinese cities. Conclusions: Based on those success factors, TheBorn extended its business into different cities in China and emerged as a franchisor giant in the Korean restaurant franchise industry.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.42-68
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• 2015

As franchise industry has grown, the role of a supervisor who is a contact point between franchisor and franchisees has become more vital to success of the business. This research, focusing on his/her specific role, explores communication type, leadership type, and followership type of the supervisor in relations with the organization, franchisor, and franchisees, respectively. Furthermore, we compared performance of franchises by the three types above through the franchise contract management leverage (FCML) which reflects business performance both qualitatively and quantitatively. According to the analysis on supervisors of a franchise business, 'Ganiyeok', the majority of supervisors' communication type were either supportive style or directive style. For the leadership type, team-type and impoverished-type leaders were the majority, while effective or passive followership appeared highest in followership type. In addition, supportive supervisors in communication style, team-type supervisors in leadership style, and effective supervisors in followership had highest FCML, while reflective and directive styles, impoverished style, and passive style had lowest FCML. Primary goal of a franchise business is stable profit generation. This study not only examined what characteristics supervisors need and which style is insufficient, but also proposed tailored solutions for each style. Thus, we confirmed that debates on franchise can be approached in perspective of both communication and business, and we further suggest diverse approaches on future franchise business.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.95-118
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is as follows. First, we investigate empirically the effects of social network properties such as social network density and centrality of a franchisee on its information sharing with various subjects such as the franchisor and other franchisees in the franchise system. Second, we examine exploratively if tie strength between a franchisee and its franchisor plays a moderating role on the relationship between social network properties and information sharing. The study model was established as shown in

• 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.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.18 no.9
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• pp.165-175
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• 2013

Though the number of food franchises has been increased these days, there has not been less success for food franchise than failure. One of the several failures is the distrust between franchisor and franchisee factors because the franchisee thought its franchisor does not make its accounts and operations transparent. In order to resolve it, the large business food franchise has used the ERP system, however, small business franchise has run a very simple information system, which is linked to POS system and consists of simple functions to insert or inquire the result of data on sales and order etc to identify the status of both franchisor and franchisee because of financial difficulties and manpower shortage. Thus, small business franchise needs the cost management between them with low cost for efficient business administration. In this study, we suggest the data reference model (DRM) which covers the cost management system and is able to be linked to any POS system. The DRM is a framework whose primary purpose is to enable information linking and reuse across the any POS-based information systems via the classification, structure, model, exchange and management of data.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.131-143
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• 2018

This paper aims to investigate the moderating effects of strength and opportunity factors between entrepreneurship of food service franchisor's CEO and performance in hood service franchise. For analyzing the relationship of them, the entrepreneurship factors categorized with organizational risk taking, innovativeness, and proactiveness from previous researches(Khandwalla, 1977; Miller, 1983; Miller, 1983). Also, strength and opportunity factors classified into detailed subfactor by confirmatory factor analysis. As a result, we found some statistically significant effects between the strength and opportunity factors and entrepreneurship factors, and they sequentially affects to performance. This result means that strength and opportunity factors have a role as a moderating variables. That is, as a presented with previous research, there is verified that entrepreneurship is caused by organizational risk taking, innovativeness, and proactiveness. Also, strength and opportunity factors significantly affect to business performance. Some guidelines for practicing potential food service franchise as a result of this would include; first of all, it is important to support the potential food service franchise consulting approach for some competitive advantage; secondly, effective governmental support programs for food service franchise should be developed for positive impacts of according to these results.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.177-187
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• 2012

Franchising has long been an effective form of distribution that is used primarily by manufacturers whose product lines are especially suited exclusive or highly selective distribution. By IFA(International Franchise Association), franchising is defined as a continuing relationship in which the franchisor provides a licensed privilege to do business, plus assistance in organizing, training, merchandising, and management in return for a consideration from the franchisee. Thus franchising is a method for the owner(franchisor) of product, service, or method to obtain retail or wholesale distribution through licensed, affiliated dealers(franchisees). With rapid increase of franchising industry globally, franchising industry is very rapidly increasing especially in the sector of outdoor restaurant industry in Korea. But there are many problems to be settled for promoting this industry. For example, the industry is too much lean outdoor restaurant industry. With franchisors' short history and lack of management capacity, shortage of distribution infrastructure, smaller size of franchising system, and low trust between franchisor and franchisee, and so on, the industry has many barriers to overcome for promoting it. Here we are suggesting that taxation benefaction, monetary support for the starting franchisee, establishment of fair trade principle, promoting information system and professional human resource should be needed.