• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.65-88
• /
• 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.

• Applied Biological Chemistry
• /
• v.21 no.3
• /
• pp.150-184
• /
• 1978

Nutritional characteristics and physio-chemical properties of mycelial growth and fruitbody formation of oyster mushroom(Pleurotus ostreatus)in synthetic media, the curtural condition for the commerical production in the rice straw and poplar sawdust media, and the changes of the chemical components of the media and mushroom during the cultivation were investigated. The results can be summarized as follows: 1. Among the carbon sources mannitol and sucrose gave rapid mycelial growth and rapid formation of fruit-body with higher yield, while lactose and rhamnose gave no mycelial growth. Also, citric acid, succinic acid, ethyl alcohol and glycerol gave poor fruit-body formation, and acetic acid, formic acid, fumaric acid, n-butyl alcohol, n-propyl alcohol and iso-butyl alcohol inhibited mycelial growth. 2. Among the nitrogen sources peptone gave rapid mycelial growth and rapid formation of fruit-body with higher yield, while D,L-alanine, asparatic acid, glycine and serine gave very poor fruit-body formation, and nitrite nitrogens, L-tryptophan and L-tyrosine inhibited mycelial growth. Inorganic nitrogens and amino acids added to peptone were effective for fruit-body growth, and thus addition of ammonium sulfate, ammonium tartarate, D,L-alanine and L-leucine resulted in about 10% increase fruit-body yield. L-asparic acid about 15%, L-arginine about 20%, L-glutamic acid, and L-lysine about 25%. 3. At C/N ratio of 15.23 fruit-body formation was fast, but the yield decreased, and at C/N ratio of 11.42 fruit-body formation was slow, but the yield increased. Also, at the same C/N ratio the higher the concentration of mannitol and petone, the higher yield was produced. Thus, from the view point of both yield of fruit-body and time required for fruiting the optimum C/N ratio would be 30. 46. 4. Thiamine, potassium dihydrogen phosphate and magnecium sulfate at the concentration of $50{\mu}g%$. 0.2% and 0.02-0.03%, respectively, gave excellent mycelial and fruit-body growth. Among the micronutrients ferrous sulfate, zinc sulfate and manganese sulfate showed synergetic growth promoting effect but lack of manganese resulted in a little reduction in mycelial and fruit-body growth. The optimum concentrati on of each these nutrients was 0.02mg%. 5. Cytosine and indole acetic acid at 0.2-1mg% and 0.01mg%, respectively, increased amount of mycelia, but had no effect on yield of fruit-body. The other purine and pyrimidine bases and plant hormones also had no effect on mycelial and fruit-belly yield. 6. Illumination inhibited mycelial growth, but illumination during the latter part of vegetative growth induced primordia formation. The optimum light intensity and exposure time was 100 to 500 lux and 6-12 hours per day, respectively. Higher intensity of light was injurous, and in darkness only vegetative growth without primordia formation was continued. 7. The optimum temperature for mycelial growth was $25^{\circ}C$ and for fruit-body formation 10 to $15^{\circi}C$. The optimum pH range was from 5.0 to 6.5. The most excellent fry it-body formation were produced from the mycelium grown for 7 to 10 days. The lesser the volume of media, the more rapid the formation of fruit-body; and the lower the yield of fruit-body; and the more the volume of media, the slower the formation of fruit-body, and the higher the yield of fruit-body. The primordia formation was inhibited by $CO_2$. 8. The optimum moisture content for mycelial growth was over 70% in the bottle media of rice straw and poplar sawdust. 10% addition of rice bran to the media exhibited excellent mycelial growth and fruit-body formation, and the addition of calciumcarbonate alone was effective, but the addition of calcium carbonate was ineffective in the presence of rice bran. 9. In the cultivation experiments the total yield of mushroom from the rice straw media was $14.99kg/m^2$, and from the sawdust media $6.52kg/m^2$, 90% of which was produced from the first and second cropping period. The total yield from the rice straw media was about 2.3 times as high as that from the sawdust media. 10. Among the chemical components of the media little change was observed in the content of ash on the dry weight basis, and organic matter content decreased as the cultivation progressed. Moisture content, which was about 79% at the time of spawning, decreased a little during the period of mycelial propagation, after which no change was observed. 11. During the period from spawning to the fourth cropping about 16.7% of the dry matter, about 19.3% of organic matter, and about 40% of nitrogen were lost from the rice straw media; about 7.5% of dry mallet, about 7.6% of organic matter, and about 20% of nitrogen were lost from the sawdust media. For the production of 1kg of mushroom about 232g of organic matter and about 7.0g of nitrogen were consumed from the rice straw media; about 235g of organic matter and about 6.8g of nitrogen were consumed from the sawdust media, 1㎏ of mushroom from either of media contains 82.4 and 82.3g of organic matter and 5.6 and 5.4g of nitrogen, respectively. 12. Total nitrogen content of the two media decreased gradually as the cultivation progressed, and total loss of insoluble nitrogen was greater than that of soluble nitrogen. Content of amino nitrogen continued to increase up to the third cropping time, after which it decreased. 13. In the rice straw media 28.0 and 13.8% of the total pentosan and ${\alpha}$-cellulose, respectively, lost during the whole cultivation period was lost during the period of mycelial growth; in the sawdust media 24.1 and 11.9% of the total pentosan and ${\alpha}$-cellulose, respectively, was lost during the period of mycelial growth. Lignin content in the media began to decrease slightly from the second cropping time, while the content of reduced sugar, trehalose and mannitol continued to increase. C/N ratio of the rice straw media decreased from 33.2 at spawining to 30.0 at ending; that of the sawdust media decreased from 61.3 to 60.0. 14. In both media phosphorus, potassium, manganese and zinc decreased, at magnesium, calcium and copper showed irregular changes, and iron had a tendency to be increased. 15. Enzyme activities are much higher in the rice straw media than in the sawdust media. CMC saccharifying and liquefying activity gradually increased from after mycelial propagation to the second cropping, after which it decreased in both media. Xylanase activity rapidly and greatly increased during the second cropping period rather than the first period. At the start of the third cropping period the activity decreased rapidly in the rice straw media, which was not observed in the sawdust media. Protease activity was highest after mycelial propagation, after which it gradually decreased. The pH of the rice straw media decreased from 6.3 at spawning to 5.0 after fourth cropping; that of the sawdust media decreased from 5.7 to 4.9. 16. The contents of all the components except crude fibre of the mushroom from the rice straw media were higher than those from the sawdust media. Little change was observed in the content of the components of mushroom cropped from the first to the third period, but slight decrease was noticed at the fourth cropping.