零售连锁特许体系加盟商加盟动机之实证研究

作为逐渐被国内尤其是中大型零售企业所采用的连锁特许经营方式,现有研究往往立足于企业总部缘何采用连锁经营,却很少关注加盟商加入连锁经营体系的动机为何。本文在文献探讨的基础上推导出加盟商可能的加盟动机,并从已有的连锁体系形成理论中寻找相应的理论支持,并以广州地区某现代连锁便利店为对象进行实证研究。数据表明,获得加盟总部的商标品牌、降低资讯成本和交易成本是现有加盟商加入便利店连锁体系的动机。     

Payment types and number of franchisees

Current studies of the franchise system usually assume that the number of franchisees is exogenous and irrelevant to the payment types. However, to a franchise system or a franchiser, the optimal number of franchisees is related to the payment types, e.g., franchise fee, royalty, etc. We develop a game-theoretical model and then use 1998 Bond's Franchise Guide Data for US franchise stores in order to test the theoretical predictions. According to our theoretical predictions, the optimal number of franchisees under a royalty is strictly less than that under a franchise fee. This is because royalties distort the effort incentive of franchisees and the franchiser can increase average revenue by having a smaller number of franchisees. A franchise fee will not distort the effort incentive of franchisees and can help achieve a higher profit for both the franchiser and the franchise system. When demand is certain, the optimal royalty rate to the franchise system is zero. Under a royalty payment, the royalty rate will be greater than zero if the franchiser maximises its own profit. Empirical results support our theoretical predictions: there is no significant relationship between franchise fee and number of franchisees. The number of franchisees has a significantly negative relationship with royalties, while it is significantly and positively correlated with the experience of the franchise system, area, training, and advertising fees required by the franchiser.     

Female franchisees; a lost opportunity for franchising sector growth?

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate why female franchisees are under-represented in franchise ownership. A qualitative approach was adopted using a collective, instrumental case study of 30 female franchisees. A number of different types of influences were identified in the literature and then elucidated and assessed. It was found that push and pull factors, work–family life balance, franchising sector characteristics and external influences act as variable incentives and disincentives among female franchisees’ selection of the franchise business model with different levels of risk-taking propensity. The marketing efforts of franchises would be more effective if the way in which the identified influences that impinge on the selection of the franchise business model informed the prospecting of potential female franchisees. A further need is identified for franchises to adjust their recruitment programmes to reflect the variable effect of incentives and disincentives at different levels of capital investment. Limited research specifically examines the selection of the franchise business model by female franchisees with various levels of risk-taking propensity and identifies the nature of influences that act as incentives and/or disincentives on that selection decision.     

Franchising in Europe: Exploring the Case of Spain with Self‐organizing Time Maps

Economic crises affect both the organizational side and the brand side of the franchise. Using self‐organizing time maps, this study examines how franchise brand behavior influences decisions by potential franchisees in Spain. The findings confirm that franchising offers an alternative to the business turnaround strategy, which firms apply when faced with adverse changes in the environment such as those caused by the economic crisis in Spain. Results show that all franchise brands within the same sector behaved similarly, except for brands in the catering sector, which displayed varying responses to the economic changes. The authors discuss the implications of these results for future franchisees.     

How Does the Franchisor's Choice of Different Control Mechanisms Affect Franchisees’ and Employee-Managers’ Satisfaction?

Satisfaction of franchisees and employee-managers affects the overall performance of a franchise system. We argue that different actors in the same franchise system need to be treated in different ways. The franchisor's choice of control mechanisms affects the satisfaction of franchisees and employee-managers differently. To our knowledge this is the first study that gathers primary data from franchisees and employee-managers in the same franchise system at the store level with almost identical questionnaires. We show based on data from the largest German franchise system that outcome control leads to higher satisfaction among franchisees and employee-managers, while behavior control enhances employee-managers’ satisfaction. Thereby, outcome control leads to higher satisfaction among more experienced franchisees, while behavior control enhances both highly and lowly experienced employee-managers’ satisfaction. Our results suggest that franchisors face a dilemma: On the one hand, behavior control is associated with high costs and has no impact on franchisees’ satisfaction at all. On the other hand, it might still be necessary to prevent franchisees from behaving opportunistically.     

Power and control in the franchise network: an investigation of ex-franchisees and brand piracy

This research considers the issue of franchisees who exit the franchise system in order to continue operating independently. The literature regarding incentives for entering franchising is reviewed in an attempt to reveal why franchisees become dissatisfied and leave. The use of power by the franchisor and its relationship to brand piracy by franchisees is explored. Franchisors and their current and former franchisees are interviewed to uncover insights into this phenomenon. Explanations concerning the effectiveness of contractual remedies, dissatisfaction with the franchise, level of dependence and expectations in the relationship, and franchisor-franchisee goal incongruence are proposed.     

Trust and Fairness During Strategic Change Processes in Franchise Systems

A very important challenge for franchisors is adapting the strategies of their franchise systems to new threats and opportunities. During such strategic change processes (SCPs) franchisees are often required to make major financial investments and/or adjustments in their trade practices without any guarantee of positive benefits. It is, therefore, important that franchisees trust their franchisors during such change processes and that they perceive the change process as fair. This article aims to generate theory on franchisees?? perceptions of trust and fairness during SCPs. On the basis of case studies regarding eight change processes in four Dutch drugstore franchise systems, this article distinguishes different levels of franchisee trust and discusses five instruments that franchisors can ??institutionalize?? in their franchise systems to influence their franchisees?? trust and fairness perceptions.     

Crossing mother: Entrepreneur-franchisees' attempts to reduce franchisor influence

Contractual terms guide many entrepreneur-franchisees' actions with the franchisor. However, it is impossible for franchisors to completely specify all future actions. They compensate by continually attempting to influence franchisees, using what franchisees perceive as suasion in their ongoing interactions. We develop a theoretical framework for understanding the informal interaction dynamics between franchisors and franchisees.Most franchise arrangements include the payment of royalties based on sales. This encourages a growth-oriented strategy, usually appropriate for the franchisees during the initial stages of their operations. Whereas a franchising strategy can reduce entreprenerial risk for franchisees, it does not eliminate it. Thus, as sales of the franchisees increase, profit-oriented strategies will be favored because they represent the payoffs that accrue to continuing entrepreneurial effort and risk-taking. These strategies may be in opposition to franchisors' sales orientation when market conditions do not allow continual growth without margin penalties. A research model is developed, depicting the relationship between franchisees' strategies and performance, and the moderating effect that contractual goals and franchisees' perception of franchisors' attempts at suasion have on this relationship. A set of research hypotheses was then empirically tested using a large sample of franchisees from the commercial truck retailing industry.The results indicate that sales-growth and profit-growth goals are not always congruent. Balancing the goals of the franchisor and franchisee did not appear to be a popular option; either one or the other was emphasized. More importantly, the results indicate that when franchisees perceive attempts by franchisors to use suasion, lower levels of profits result, but there is no corresponding increase in the level of sales.In the long-term, franchisors are likely to determine that current contractual arrangements are not protecting their longer term interests. Thus, they will be expected to attempt to modify franchise contracts in ways that force franchisees to implement sales-gain strategies. This will require that entrepreneur-franchisees anticipate future events more carefully at the time they are examining the original franchise contract. Because most entrepreneurs are concerned with immediate survival at the start-up stage, this makes examination of the contract less likely to happen; the franchise option is attractive because it reduces such risks.We recommend that entrepreneurs write ex ante contingent claims contracts that ensure a gradual reduction of franchisor influence. Although this would assume a power or knowledge balance that favors the franchisees, which is unlikely during the start-up phase, it will change over time as franchisees gain a better understanding of the local competitive dynamics. Thus, it may well serve the franchisees to take a defensive posture or push a royalty arrangement that decreases the emphasis on sales over time. This is most likely to be effective where the entrepreneur is considering several competing franchises at the time of the signing of the contract.Finally, we recommend that entrepreneur-franchisees should not assume that the expert advice offered by their franchisor is always in their best interests. Although technical advice is more likely to be unbiased and should be fully exploited, as this is what makes the franchise valuable, strategic advice, or that which relates to goal setting may well be colored by the financial interests of the franchisor. Franchisors are unlikely to consider the possibility that franchisees would be better served by formulating their own strategies, nor are they likely to consider that the franchise network would be better off, in the longer term, by the collective impact associated with numerous franchisees independently formulating their own strategies. In short, although we do not suggest that franchisees should always assume that “crossing mother” is the best response to all perceived franchisor-suasion efforts, they should carefully examine all strategic advice.     

Multi-unit franchising: Growth and management issues

Entrepreneurs in a number of retailing sectors have eschewed the creation of company-owned chains and have embraced franchising as a preferred method for growing their businesses. There have been two leading reasons proposed for this preference. First, that franchisees provide the financial capital necessary for expansion, and second that franchisees manage the outlets better than company employees would if the unit were company owned. Interestingly, although many entrepreneur/franchisors confirm the relevance of the capital acquisition argument in their decision-making, theoretical analysis has discounted its importance. Instead, researchers have focused on the incentives of employee store-managers to misrepresent their ability and their effort as the dominant impetus behind franchising. Misrepresentation by employees as to ability and effort imposes costs and inefficiencies on the entrepreneur's chain. Arguing that franchising solves these problems by having the stores managed by persons with claims to the profits, these researchers have, by and large, rejected the capital acquisition argument for franchising in favor of this incentive-based rationale.Within this view, multi-unit franchising presents a curious anomaly. Multi-unit franchising, either through the incremental expansion by the franchisee one unit at a time or through the rights to open multiple units contained in an area development agreement, creates a collection of mini-chains within the franchise system. These mini-chains are operated by employee store-managers. Of course, they are employees of the franchisee, but they are employees nonetheless, and as franchise researchers have traditionally argued regarding the entrepreneur's employees, they will have incentives to misrepresent their ability and effort. Moreover, multi-unit franchising is ubiquitous.If multi-unit franchising is at odds with the incentive rationale for franchising, and it has a positive association with the growth of franchise systems, it must be providing the entrepreneur with some other benefit. In this study, we argue that the benefit it provides is access to capital. Through a study of fast-food franchise systems, we demonstrate that the more a chain engages in multi-unit franchising (i.e., the greater the proportion of multi-unit franchisees it has), the faster it grows, even faster than franchise systems generally. Moreover, we show that the level of commitment franchisors feel toward continuing to franchise is negatively related to the average number of units per franchisee and negatively related to their ability to obtain financial capital elsewhere. In other words, although multi-unit franchising helps an entrepreneur grow his or her business by providing increased access to capital, store level incentive problems get increasingly troublesome as franchisees get more and more units. It would appear, therefore, that capital acquisition is a relevant reason for engaging in franchising after all.     

Entrepreneurial networking: a blessing or a curse? Differential effects for low,medium and high performing franchisees

Recent studies have called for a better understanding of the link between networking and entrepreneurial performance. We provide such understanding in three ways: by focusing on a specific entrepreneurial context (franchise systems), by developing a multi-faceted theoretical framework and by highlighting a contingency that may affect the networking-performance link. We combine knowledge and learning perspectives with a networking perspective to develop and test a multi-faceted framework on the effects of franchisee networking with peers within a franchise system (‘peer networking’) on franchisee unit performance. In particular, we argue that the performance benefits that franchisees draw from networking with their peers vary between low, medium and high performing franchisees. We use ordinary least squares (OLS) and Quantile Regression analyses to test our hypotheses with empirical data from a Dutch franchise system. Our results confirm that structural, resource and relational facets of franchisee peer networking affect unit performance, and that they benefit and harm low, medium, and high performing franchisees differently.     

Does the Franchisor Provide Value to Franchisees? Past,Current, and Future Value Assessments of Two Franchisee Types

The degree to which a franchise system penetrates a target market over time often is influenced by the rate to which its individual franchisees expand. Yet a franchisee's decision to expand the business operation depends, in part, on the perception of value that the franchisee expects to receive from the franchisor in return for a variety of fees (for example, entry fee, advertising fees, royalties). Moreover, the franchisee's experience with its franchisor may strengthen or weaken his or her perception of franchisor value. The change in perception of franchisor value can influence franchisees' decisions to expand their franchise operations. To date, scant research exists on factors influencing a franchisee's decision to expand. In the reported study, a four-stage analysis was conducted to examine empirically whether franchisees' opinions about the value of their franchisors changes over time. The study findings reveal that franchisees had the strongest, positive opinions when asked to recall an earlier decision to expand their franchise operations. These opinions weakened when franchisees contemplating expansion of their operations were asked for their current and anticipated future opinions of franchisor value. Overall, franchisees were undecided when asked about their perceptions of current franchisor value and anticipated future franchisor value. Implications of these findings for theory and practice of franchising are discussed.     

Barriers to Franchising in Saudi Arabia

Franchising has rapidly grown in Saudi Arabia since 2005, yet a small number of the large companies dominate the market with mostly foreign brands. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the barriers that Saudi small and medium enterprises and startups face when striving to become franchisors or franchisees. These barriers are investigated through the use of semi-structured interviews with people who belong to the franchise community either as administrators, franchise committee members, franchise developers, franchisees–franchisors, or prospective franchisees and franchisors. The results of this study show that there are several barriers standing against using franchising as a mode of expansion and investment by small and medium enterprises and startups, such as lack of legal, financial, institutional, marketing, development, and educational services support, and other key factors related to international franchisors' preferences and domestic franchising.     

How Do Franchisees Assess Franchisor Trustworthiness?

This study investigates the antecedents of franchisees’ assessments of franchisor trustworthiness. It combines multiple theoretical perspectives to develop a framework that is empirically tested with survey data from 128 franchisees of a Dutch franchise system. The results show that franchisees’ perceptions of a franchisor's fulfillment of its functional duties on proactive and reactive quality assurance and strategic management positively influence franchisees’ assessments of franchisor trustworthiness. Moreover, the results show that the impact of the antecedents on franchisees’ trustworthiness assessments varies across franchisees: market competition attenuates the influence of strategic management and reactive quality assurance. Unit performance does not moderate the importance of the antecedents.     

Antecedents of early terminations in franchising: franchisor versus franchisee cancelations

Franchisors capitalize on franchisee entrepreneurial capacity to grow. However, enabling franchisees to develop their ventures may damage system consistency. This dilemma makes conflict particularly prevalent in the field of franchising. Nevertheless, prior research has reported an incomplete picture of factors leading to serious disagreement and premature termination in franchise partnerships. We address this gap, first, by adding the entrepreneurial autonomy of franchisees as a relevant but underexplored source of conflict and, second, by providing a more fine-grained analysis of franchisors’ versus franchisees’ drivers of termination. Specifically, we focus on the controversial issues of pricing and local advertising policies and analyze how expanding franchisees’ entrepreneurial autonomy in these decision areas is related to contract terminations depending on who ended the relationship (the franchisor or a franchisee). The study also highlights less controversial requirements and conditions (e.g., upfront investments, franchisor experience …) that may reduce early terminations. Our empirical objectives are met by using survey data from a sample of franchisor companies. The results show how the performance outcomes of entrepreneurial autonomy differ depending on the decision area in which it is exercised. Results also throw light on the consequences of various critical franchise policies that may be masked if both types of termination (franchisors vs. franchisees) are considered together.     

Franchiser influence strategy use and franchisee experience and dependence

Data from a survey of franchisees of a packaging, mailing, and business services franchise system indicate franchisers make more frequent use of requests, threats, and legalistic pleas, and less use of recommendations to coordinate less dependent franchisees. Franchisee dependence mediates the relationship between franchisee experience and franchiser use of recommendations, threats, and legalistic pleas. At the same time, it is interesting to find that franchiser use of information exchange and promise does not vary as franchisees mature in a system.     

Market orientation in franchise networks: a contrast analysis of franchisors and franchisees views

Market orientation is considered as key to organizational survival and performance. In inter-firm settings, previous research indicates that it contributes to the overall performance of marketing channels. This research note investigates the perception of market orientation in franchise networks. Based on a dyadic multi-sectorial sample of 27 franchisors and 720 of their franchisees, the study examines how franchisors and franchisees perceive market orientation and to what extent their perceptions are concordant views. The underlying hypothesis is that a common view of the network orientation facilitates co-ordination and eventually performance. Results indicate that although the spirit of market orientation may be partially shared within the franchise channel, its consequences in terms of performance are not uniform.     

Developing brand champions: A franchisee perspective

Abstract

The establishment of a compelling brand lies at the heart of a franchise network’s success. To maintain brand integrity, franchisors rely on franchisees to deliver the brand promise consistently. However, franchisee behaviour is sometimes difficult to manage, impacting negatively on the franchise brand. In adopting an internal brand management theoretical lens, this study provides new insight into the development of franchisees as brand champions. This is achieved through the empirical validation of a model, which encapsulates the dynamics of important antecedent variables (i.e. information generation, knowledge dissemination, the ‘H’ factor, role clarity, franchisee satisfaction, and brand commitment) in creating franchise brand champions. The findings provide significant theoretical and practical implications and lay the foundation for future research in this important research domain.     

The Effective Delivery of Franchisor Services: A Comparison of U.S. and German Support Practices for Franchisees

ABSTRACT

Conventional wisdom suggests that more services offered by franchisors should lead to fewer complaints from franchisees, and that franchisees ought to be better off with additional support provided. We set out to differentiate those services that are truly effective and are perceived as beneficial by franchisees from those that may have little effect or may even be perceived as counterproductive. Our survey targeted franchisors in the U.S. and in Germany, comparing the most mature franchise market globally to one that is relatively young. System disruption was found to be dependent on the maturity of the market, as little differentiation is provided in the very mature U.S. market, but considerable differentiation exists in the younger German market. Also, the size of the system matters, as bigger systems typically provide more services. Finally, different types of services have varying levels of effectiveness in the less mature franchise market of Germany.     

Complementarities between franchise contract duration and multi-unit propensity in franchise systems

This article explores the determinants of two crucial decisions in franchising relations: the contract length and the franchisers' propensity to allow franchisees to own several stores. The results show that franchisers alleviate franchisees' fears of hold-up by providing them with longer contract length. The findings also show that the lower the contracting experience of the franchisers and the higher the potential free-riding in a franchise system, the shorter the contract duration. Regarding multi-unit franchising, franchisers have a lower propensity to allow franchisees to own several outlets when the cost of monitoring outlet managers are high, and they have a greater propensity to offer multi-unit opportunities when free-riding appears to be a threat. The findings also show the existence of complementarities between the decisions studied, such that they constitute a system of interdependent elements.