Franchising in Spain: Agency and capital scarcity perspectives

Franchising is currently perhaps the most interesting formula, financially speaking, for generating self-employment, as the capital risk on the investment needed to set up a business is kept to a minimum. Since the aim of this research is to combine the agency and scarcity theories, we conducted a study throughout the total number of observations existing in Spain to determine the importance of the sector. Factors under examination included the number of distribution units that are franchised units as a proportion of the total number of units, the number of years since the firm was set up, yearly growth rate, geographical scope of operation, average start-up costs and average royalty rates.     

Mall Haul Videos: Self‐Presentational Motives and the Role of Self‐Monitoring

Mall haul videos or vlogs are short videos in which young women not only present their fashion and beauty purchases but express their evaluations and opinions as well. The attitudes expressed could help the vlogger reap social rewards from a reference group or demonstrate the consistency between privately held attitudes and publicly expressed ones. In four studies, using the self‐monitoring construct to identify which function an attitude may serve for an individual, the self‐monitoring propensity of mall haul vloggers and the social‐adjustive and value‐expressive functions that posting and watching such vlogs fulfill for the individual was explored. In the first study, those who post and do not post mall haul vlogs were surveyed and results suggested that more high self‐monitors than low self‐monitors posted mall haul vlogs. In Study 2, a content analysis was conducted and revealed that low self‐monitors in comparison to high self‐monitors mentioned more brand names in their mall haul vlog. In Study 3, the valence of the product evaluations conveyed in mall haul vlogs by high and low self‐monitors was analyzed. High self‐monitors generated more positive messages than low self‐monitors. Finally in Study 4, the links between self‐monitoring on individuals’ willingness to watch rather than post mall haul vlogs were examined. High self‐monitors were more likely to watch a mall haul vlog when the retailer mentioned was perceived to possess high status (compared to medium or low status); while low self‐monitors were more likely to watch a mall haul vlog when the retailer mentioned was perceived to possess low status (compared to medium or high status). Across all four studies, results indicated that mall haul vlogs were fulfilling a social‐adjustive function for high self‐monitors whereas they were fulfilling a value‐expressive function for low self‐monitors. Implications for marketing are discussed.     

Debt Literacy and Debt Literacy Self‐Assessment: The Case of Poland

It is well documented that financial literacy is at best moderate around the world and that the cost of ignorance in this field may be high on both microeconomic and macroeconomic levels. We surveyed a representative sample of Poles to measure their debt literacy—a little‐studied aspect of financial literacy—and therefore obtain insight into the factors predicting it. Our study evidenced low levels of debt literacy and its overestimation by respondents in their self‐reports. We also confirmed some of the patterns found in former studies, including the gender gap and a positive relationship between the level of educational attainment and debt literacy. Finally, our examination provides compelling outcomes with regard to the segmentation of the sample on the basis of objective and subjective debt literacy scores. They show large heterogeneity of debt literacy and thus confirm the need for far‐reaching customization of debt‐oriented education.     

Evaluating Advice: Self‐Presentational Biases between High and Low Self‐Monitors

Previous research has demonstrated that high and low self‐monitors sought advice from others who shared their underlying motivational dispositions. Here, three studies extend the prior research by exploring how consumers’ underlying motives direct the type of advice offered and how it is evaluated. In Study 1, high and low self‐monitors were asked to evaluate the advice they gave others. As predicted, high self‐monitors rated their advice more favorably than did low self‐monitors. The underlying motivation that caused high self‐monitors to evaluate their advice more positively was investigated in Study 2. Results indicated that high self‐monitors rated their advice higher because it appeared to be meeting a social‐adjustive function (i.e., self‐presentational needs). In Study 3, high and low self‐monitors created an advertisement that featured their advice on dating for a fictitious online matchmaking service. As expected, advertisements created by high self‐monitors contained advice that addressed social‐adjustive needs while those created by low self‐monitors contained advice that addressed value‐expressive needs. The results of these studies suggest that underlying motivations of the individual play an active role in how advice is crafted and evaluated.     

Reducing the Size of Internal Hierarchy: The Case of Multi-Unit Franchising

Successive layers of supervisor–subordinate relationships in organizations often distort information, increase monitoring costs, and lead to a cumulative loss of control. This paper discusses how some organizations can reduce their internal hierarchy by slicing it into two components and substituting the supervisor–subordinate relationship with an independent contract. This substitution allows the organization to shift its lower-level hierarchy to the contractors. These contractors are less likely to indulge in moral hazard, which can further reduce the size of hierarchy required. The paper examines this theory in the domain of multi-unit franchising and tests the hypotheses with a longitudinal data set.     

Retailers’ Price Positioning and the Motivational Profiling of Store‐Brand Shoppers: The Case of Spain

In recent years, retailers have worked to advance store‐brand strategies, leading to greater success and higher congruence with the retailer's positioning. In this new competitive context, this research aims to characterize store‐brand shoppers in terms of motivation and benefits sought, as well as analyze, on the basis of congruence theory, the moderating role of a retailer's price positioning on store‐brand shopper characterizations. The empirical study combines survey and household panel information related to leading retailers in Spain; the findings reveal that store‐brand shoppers are motivated by their price sensitivity, whereas they are less sensitive to service quality and name brands. However, the retailer's price positioning exerts a moderating effect on shopper profiles: In less price‐oriented retail chains, store‐brand purchases seem motivated less by price and more by quality, brand awareness, and brand reputation.     

Self‐similarity in long‐horizon returns

Asset returns incorporate new information via the effects of independent and possibly identically distributed random shocks. They may also incorporate long memory effects related to the concept of self‐similarity. The two approaches are here combined. In addition, methods are proposed for estimating the contribution of each component and evidence supporting the presence of both components in both the physical and risk‐neutral distributions is presented. Furthermore, it is shown that long‐horizon returns may be nonnormal when there is a self‐similar component. The presence of a self‐similar component also questions positive equity biases over the longer term.     

Make it Your Own: How Process Valence and Self‐Construal Affect Evaluation of Self‐Made Products

Self‐production, participation of consumers in the production process of products for their own consumption, leads to consumers’ enhanced evaluations of the self‐made products. Three experimental studies investigate how and why self‐production affects consumers’ product evaluations and reveal that not all production experiences create additional value for all consumers. In particular, Studies 1 and 2, using hypothetical stories and real experiences, show that only positive (vs. negative) production experiences enhance evaluations of self‐made products over products made by others. Positive (but not negative) experiences decrease the psychological distance between the self and the product and strengthen identification with it. Study 3 manipulates self‐construal (independent vs. interdependent) to investigate its role on evaluation of self‐made products and products made with close others as a group (i.e., group‐made). Consumers with independent self‐construal evaluate self‐made (vs. other‐made) products more favorably only if the process is positive. However, consumers with interdependent self‐construal evaluate self‐made products more favorably even if the process is negative. Additionally, consumers with interdependent (vs. independent) self‐construal exhibit more favorable evaluation of group‐made products. Finally, even if consumers know how another person feels while making a product, other people's process emotions do not affect consumers’ product judgments as strongly as their own experienced process emotions.     

Trust,Decision Rights Delegation,and Performance—The Case of Franchising

Previous research has not examined the relationship between trust, decentralization, and franchisor performance. Complementary to the literature on autonomy and relational governance from franchisees’ perspective, this study focuses on the franchisor's perspective on the impact of decentralization and trust on performance. Consistent with the embeddedness view, the results show that trust is a facilitator of decentralization in franchise networks, thereby increasing the positive performance effect of decision rights delegation. Overall, the study offers a new perspective on the relationship between formal governance—through decision rights allocation—and trust as a relational variable in interorganizational networks.     

Personality,Personal Values,and Consumer Participation in Self‐Production: The Case of Home Meal Preparation

This study investigates the simultaneous influence of personality and personal values on attitude toward self‐production, and how self‐production attitude influences use of time and depth of self‐production behavior in home meal preparation. The results show that self‐control and agreeableness personality traits positively influence attitude toward self‐production, while the resultant self‐enhancement value dimension has a negative effect. Moreover, self‐control negatively moderates the influence of resultant self‐enhancement on self‐production attitude. Attitude toward self‐production has positive influences on both dimensions of self‐production behavior, with a stronger effect on the depth dimension than on the time use dimension. The results support the proposed hierarchical model that personality and personal values relate to more specific self‐production attitude and behavior in a food preparation context.     

Self‐regulation of unwanted consumption

The issue of consumption control is viewed from the perspective of self‐regulation in which successful attempts at controlling problem behaviors depend upon achieving motivational readiness. It is proposed that consumption control can be understood as a series of stage‐related processes that follow from theoretical accounts of self‐regulation contained in the transtheoretical model of change, and the model of action phases. In order to observe ongoing consumption‐control processes, a diary study, in which participants described their actions, thoughts, and feelings in attempting a personal consumption‐control project, was conducted. Diary entries were interpreted in light of theoretical stage‐related processes. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Brand Ownership As a Central Component of Adolescent Self‐esteem: The Development of a New Self‐esteem Scale

This article outlines the development of a new scale to measure adolescent self‐esteem. The new scale addresses weaknesses in existing measures that have failed to consider the growth of the consumer society in the Western world and the impact of this on the formation of adolescent self‐esteem. The development of this scale includes extensive qualitative research with over 100 high school pupils, which led to a series of quantitative data collection and analysis processes to develop the scale. In the final stage, data were collected from 889 pupils and analyzed to confirm the validity and reliability of the new measure. The result of this work is a 21‐item self‐esteem scale comprising of four distinct, yet interrelated factors: self‐evaluation, social ability, social comparison effects, and notably, brand ownership. The findings provide an updated and upgraded measure of self‐esteem that takes into consideration the specific audience of adolescents living in a consumer culture. The scale development process demonstrates that when considering the formation of self‐esteem, the influence of the use and possession of commercial brands is as relevant as the traditional factors/components such as academic achievement or sporting prowess.     

How Firm Strategies Impact Size of Partner‐Based Retail Networks: Evidence From Franchising

How do firms' partnering strategies impact the size of their partner‐based retail networks? We draw on agency theory to address this question in the context of franchising. Our econometric analyses (based on 9 years of longitudinal balanced panel data) include assessment of data nonstationarity and estimation of a dynamic panel data model that accounts for unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity. Our findings indicate that franchisee network size is driven more by franchisor strategies that mitigate agency costs than by strategies that simply lower entry and ongoing costs and barriers for franchisees.     

Franchising in African markets: Motivations and challenges from a Sub‐Saharan African country perspective

The purpose of this article is to explore and understand the motivations and challenges of franchising in an African economy. While interest in franchising is increasing in African markets, there is a paucity of research on franchising from the perspective of local African firms participating in these international relationships. The motivations and challenges of franchising from the perspective of African businesses have not been largely investigated so far. Using in‐depth interviews, we allow motivations and challenges at play to emerge. Convenient and snowball sampling techniques were used for choosing the unit of analysis, which resulted in four respondent firms. A thematic approach was adopted for analyzing the data from the field. Support services, brand name, and franchisor's experience are identified to be the motivations for franchising. Financial assistance from the franchisor, demand, and competition also play a key role in an African firm's decision to franchise. Legal constraints and infrastructure constraints were the key challenges faced by franchisees in Ghana. The findings of this study may hold for franchisees in other African markets. However, contextual differences may be considered in the application of these findings.     

Brand‐Situation Congruity: The Roles of Self‐Construal and Brand Commitment

The present research examines the moderating roles of self‐construal and brand commitment in brand‐situation congruity effects in persuasion. Self‐construal refers to how individuals perceive themselves in the context of relationships with others (Singelis, 1994). Individuals with independent self‐construal, who emphasize autonomy and assertiveness, value consistency regardless of social contexts, whereas people with interdependent self‐construal value their relationships with others and adapt with flexibility to social situations. Commitment is a psychological state that globally represents the experience of dependence on a relationship and denotes a long‐term orientation, including a feeling of attachment to a relational partner and a desire to maintain a relationship (Rusbult, 1983). In the same vein, brand commitment refers to emotional or psychological attachment to and dependence on a brand (Beatty & Kahle, 1988x). Experiment 1 demonstrated that brand‐situation congruity, for which brand preference increases when the brand personality is congruent (vs. incongruent) with social situational cues, was stronger for interdependent (vs. independent) self‐construal individuals. Experiment 2 provided further support for the moderating role of self‐construal, when primed, in situation congruity effects as well as evidence for another moderator, brand commitment. That is, the moderating effect of self‐construal on brand‐situation congruity was stronger when consumers held weak (vs. strong) commitment to the target brand.     

Ad–self‐congruency effects: Self‐enhancing cognitive and affective mechanisms

This article explores how the drive for self‐enhancement influences responses to ads depicting images that are self‐congruent along the dimensions of femininity and individualism/collectivism. Participants' schematics on the portrayed dimension were found to exhibit higher levels of cognitive self‐referencing and positive affect when the ad image was congruent with their ideal self‐schemata than when it was not. Greater self‐referencing and positive affect were found, in turn, to promote more favorable ad attitudes, thereby resulting in more positive brand attitudes. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Consumer Self‐Confidence in Searching for Information

Consumer behavior is often driven by the extent to which consumers feel confident regarding their decisions, which frequently hinge, especially in high‐stakes situations, on their information search. This article examines a multidimensional self‐confidence concept to explore how consumer self‐confidence influences information search. Findings of a mail survey document that high‐confidence consumers engage in more intensive search activities and that demographic patterns shape consumer self‐confidence scores. The findings empirically support a multidimensional measurement of self‐confidence to predict search behavior and suggest avenues to enhance the self‐confidence needed to produce positive marketplace experiences.     

Around Europe: Bulgaria in a Time of Change

In the process of recovering a noble commercial past, Bulgaria has serious problems to deal with. The author is Director General of the Bulgarian State Institute of Marketing and Management in Sofia.     

Cross‐Functional Integration Revisited: Exploring the Conceptual Elephant

Despite multiple decades of previous research, cross‐functional integration (CFI) remains a poorly understood concept. We argue for definitional clarity to differentiate CFI from other related concepts, such as interfirm integration or supply chain integration. We also argue for theoretical grounding to provide context for understanding the role of CFI within a firm as well as between firms. This article provides a foundation for researchers to move forward in creating a broader understanding of CFI as a focal construct of interest within the supply chain domain.