Determinants of E-commerce adoption by franchisors: Insights from the U.S. market

E-commerce has grown tremendously over the past decade. This paper focuses on E-commerce adoption within the franchising sector. We formulate various hypotheses on the factors that influence the adoption of an E-commerce strategy by franchisors, namely the percentage of company-owned stores in the network, network size and age, franchisor resources (franchising fees and franchising royalties), and the allocation of exclusive territories to franchisees. The empirical study relies on a sample of 486 franchise networks in the U.S. market. Our findings suggest that the percentage of company-owned stores and the brand image, as represented by network size, both exert a significant and positive impact on the adoption of an E-commerce strategy, whereas network age and franchising royalties exert a significant and negative impact on the adoption of such a strategy. These findings are discussed with respect to previous research results.E-commerce, franchising, determinants, plural form, brand image, franchisors' resources

Determinants of Corporate Social Disclosure in the Franchising Sector: Insights from French Franchisors’ Websites

This paper focuses on the notion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) within the franchising sector. More specifically, a set of research hypotheses derived from Regulation Theory and Transaction Cost Analysis addresses the relationships first between the chain size and the extent of corporate social disclosure (CSD) on franchisors' websites, and then between the percentage of company-owned units within the chain and the extent of corporate social disclosure (CSD) on franchisors' websites. The empirical study encompasses a total of 136 French franchise chains. Findings reveal that 86.03% of these franchisors communicate about their CSR activities on their website. Moreover, a significant relationship exists between chain size (respectively, the percentage of company-owned units within the chain) and the extent of CSD provided on franchisors' websites.Franchising, Corporate social responsibility, Corporate social disclosure, Chain size, Percentage of company-owned units

Plural Form and Franchise Chains Efficency: A Dea Meta-Frontier Approach applied to French Chains

This paper deals with the performance of franchise chains related to their percentage of company-owned outlets (PCO). This research uses a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to assess franchise chains’ efficiency, and a meta-frontier approach to analyze chains’ efficiency between and across sectors. The sample includes 43 chains of the service and retail sectors, located in the French market. Data are available over the 2005-2007 period allowing a longitudinal analysis. The main findings show that the meta-frontier is built up on retail chains rather than on service chains, and that there is a relationship between the PCO and the chain efficiency. Finally, there is no significant difference between the observed PCOs and the optimal PCOs which means that franchisors in our sample have already reached a PCO that is close to the PCO that optimizes the chain efficiency.Creation-Date: 2012-02Franchising, Plural Form, Percentage of company-owned outlets (PCO), Efficiency, Data Envelopment Analysis, Meta Frontier

Managing entrepreneurial tensions in franchise systems

This is a draft chapter / article. The final version is available in handbook of Research on Franchising, edited by Frank Hoy, Rozenn Perrigot and Andrew Terry, published in 2017, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781785364181. Under embargo until 27 April 2018. The material cannot be used for any other purpose without further permission of the publisher, and is for private use only.The role of entrepreneurship in franchise systems has been a complex issue. This Chapter aims to provide a better understanding on this issue by focusing on the entrepreneurial tensions that exist in franchise systems and the associated coping mechanisms for minimizing these tensions. It draws on a range of classic and emergent theoretical explanations, which are substantiated with empirical evidence. The Chapter highlights notable contributions in this research area and offers directions to guide future studies in order to provide clarity on the entrepreneurial paradoxes in franchising.Peer reviewe

El futuro de los hipermercados en España: ¿qué se puede aprender de la experiencia francesa?

La historia del hipermercado empezó hace más de 40 años y se ha convertido en este tiempo en uno de los grandes protagonistas de la distribución comercial moderna. El objetivo de este trabajo es explicar su desarrollo, con el fin de predecir futuras implantaciones en Francia, su lugar de origen, y de forma comparada en España, en donde el formato inició su actividad diez años después. Los resultados obtenidos establecen la validez del concepto «ciclo de vida» para explicar la evolución del hipermercado en ambos contextos geográficos, predicen un futuro incierto en Francia, y apuntan dificultades probables, a las que el formato tendrá que hacer frente, en el contexto españ[email protected]

Influential factors of pro‐environmental behaviors among franchisees in the fast‐food sector

In spite of the increasing attention on environmental sustainability, there is a dearth of knowledge about franchisees' pro-environmental behaviors. This study aims to understand the factors that influence the extent to which franchisees engage in pro-environmental behaviors in the fast-food sector. The research is based on in-depth interviews with franchisees operating restaurants in the fast-food sector in France. The empirical evidence in this qualitative study shows how franchisees' pro-environmental behaviors can be explained as a result of organizational and personal factors, thereby extending the theory of planned behavior, norm-activation-model and organizational support theory within the franchising context. This study offers avenues for more research on green practices in franchising, as well as in the hospitality sector and other sectors such as retailing. It provides important implications for franchise practitioners in the fast-food sector on how to create a more environmentally sustainable business model. The findings offer the first known model of pro-environmental behaviors of franchisees

The influence of entrepreneurial personality on franchisee performance: A cross-cultural analysis

Through a survey-based study of 761 franchisees from four countries, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Spain – this research examines how a franchisee’s entrepreneurial personality traits affects the financial and relational performance of franchise units. While there is consensus that franchisee characteristics are important for successful franchise networks, there is a long-standing debate within the franchise literature as to the status, and indeed desirability, of franchisees as entrepreneurs. First, we consider how the personality traits of proactivity, innovativeness and locus of control influence the manifestation of entrepreneurial behaviours within the franchise unit, and both the direct and indirect relationships with unit performance. Second, we explore these relationships in two contexts, one associated with high entrepreneurial values (the United States and the United Kingdom) and another with low entrepreneurial values (France and Spain) to determine if the results are consistent across cultures which value entrepreneurship differently. The results suggest that franchisee performance, in terms of both financial performance and relationship quality, are indirectly enhanced by a proactive disposition, mediated by entrepreneurial behaviours. A direct positive relationship was found between locus of control and performance outcomes, but interestingly, franchisees with more innovative personalities performed less well financially. The relationships between franchisee personality, entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and performance were found to be largely consistent across the two cultural groups

Entrepreneurial Orientation Rhetoric in Franchise Organizations: The Impact of National Culture

This study examines the role of national culture on the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) rhetoric contained within franchisee recruitment promotional materials, where EO rhetoric is defined as the strategic use of words in organizational narratives to convey the risk taking, innovativeness, proactiveness, autonomy, and competitive aggressiveness of the firm. The sample comprised 378 franchise organizations, in five different countries (Australia, France, India, South Africa, and the UK). The results indicate that franchise systems operating in high uncertainty avoidance and feminine cultures use less entrepreneurially oriented rhetoric, suggesting that EO rhetoric in franchise organizations varies according to different national cultural contexts

The influence of the plural form on internationalization<br />Evidence from the US and French franchising networks

International audienceTwo important topics often explored in the franchising literature are networkinternationalization and plural form. Nevertheless, these two research streams have notconverged so far. The purpose of this paper is therefore to explore if there is any significantlink between the plural form and the internationalization of the franchising networks. And ifthe response is positive, “is the influence of the plural form on network internationalizationpositive or negative?”. The empirical study involving 898 US and French networks amongwhich 42.1% are international networks highlights the existence of significant differencesbetween international networks and purely domestic networks in terms of plural form. Indeed,the plural form rate for networks having operations abroad is lower than this for domesticnetworks when combining the two samples of networks and also in the French market.Moreover, in these two cases, the results of the logistic regression models underline thesignificant and negative impact of the plural form on internationalization. The results arenevertheless insignificant in the US context. Some elements of explanations of the findingsare presented

The Impact of Having Both Franchised Stores and Company-owned Stores Within a Same Network on the Internationalization - Empirical Results from the us and French Franchising Networks,

International audienc