Purpose: In 2020, the franchise industry accomplished a significant growth compared to the previous year, as the number of franchise companies increased by 9.0% while the number of franchise brands increased by 12.5%. Despite growth in size, the Korean franchise industry underwent many negative incidents, such as franchise ownership sales to private equity funds, that led to deterioration of businesses. From this point of view, this study aims to make various proposals to help policy makers develop franchise industry policies by analyzing trends of the current and previous presidential administrations' franchise policies and regulations using newspaper articles. Research design, data and methodology: A total of 7,439 articles registered in Naver API from February 25, 2013 to November 29, 2021 were extracted. Among them, 34 unrelated video articles were deleted, and a total of 7,405 articles from both administrations were used for analysis. The R package was used for word frequency analysis, word clouding, word correlation analysis, and LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) topic modeling. Results: The keyword frequency analysis shows that the most frequently mentioned keywords during the previous administration include 'no-brand', 'major company', 'bill', 'business field', and 'SMEs', and those mentioned during the current administration include 'industry' and 'policy'. As a result of LDA topic modeling, 9 topics such as 'global startups' and 'job creation' from the previous administration, and 10 topics such as 'franchise business' and 'distribution industry' from the current administration were derived. The results of LDAvis showed that the previous administration operated a policy based on mutual growth of large and small businesses rather than hostile regulations in the franchise business, whereas the current administration extended the regulation related to franchise business to the employment sector. Conclusions: The analysis of past two administrations' franchise policy, it can be suggested that franchisors and franchisees may complement each other in developing the Fair Transactions in Franchise Business Act and achieving balanced growth. Moreover, political support is needed for sound development of franchisors. Limitations and future research suggestions are presented at the end of this study.

Purpose: Brand hearsay refers to information that can be acquired from advertisement, media publicity, and word-of-mouth prior to experiencing products or services of brands. Previous information about brands obtained through brand hearsay affects consumer behavior in choosing brands. Moreover, brand hearsay is an effective communication method in promoting brands to consumers. Thus, bakery franchises need to improve strengths and differentiate characteristics of their brand, thereby attracting more consumers. Therefore, this study investigates relationships the effect of brand hearsay on consumers' brand attitude and brand loyalty in the context of franchised bakery brands. Research design, data, and methodology: A research model was proposed to examine structural relationships between brand hearsay (advertising, publicity, word-of-mouth), brand attitude, and brand loyalty. An online survey was conducted to consumers who had an experience of visiting a franchise bakery. A total of 513 responses were used for data analysis. SPSS 22.0 was used for analyzing general demographics, and SmartPLS 4.0 was used to test validity and reliability of the proposed model. Result: Among attributes of brand hearsay, advertisement and word-of-mouth had positively significant effects on brand attitude, but no significant effect was found between publicity and attitude. Advertisement had a positively significant impact on brand loyalty, while publicity had a negative effect on brand loyalty opposite to hypothesis. Moreover, brand attitude had a statistically significant effect on brand loyalty. Conclusions: In the context of franchise bakeries, brand hearsay contents may change consumers' attitude toward brands but does not increase brand loyalty. Though media publicity does not affect consumers' attitude toward brands, it may decrease brand loyalty when consumers are too exposed to it. In addition, it is necessary to enhance brand attitude to increase brand loyalty of customers. This study provides bakery franchisors and franchisees information about which type of brand hearsay (e.g., advertisement, word-of-mouth, media, publicity) is effective in enhancing brand attitudes and loyalty of consumers. Further studies may include other variables (e.g., trust) in addition to attitude and loyalty, or compare findings based on brand characteristics (e.g., low-to-medium/high prices, store size).

Purpose: The Korean franchise market has undergone drastic growth in recent years. Followed by expansion of franchise business types, relevant legal matters have diversified. Compared to conventional economic laws that focused on resolving problems related to unfair transactions between franchisors and franchisees, more diverse labor laws have emerged recently due to governance and economic dependencies of franchise structure. However, it was found that the business environment of franchisees and working conditions of franchisee employees have not changed accordingly due to the unique structure of franchise business. Though franchisees are entrepreneurs independent from franchisors, they are still under franchising contract with the franchisors. For instance, employees of franchisees have been exposed to malpractices in regard to pay, time, and other working conditions. These malpractices may show the ineffectiveness of current labor laws. Labor management is an important issue for sustainability of franchise businesses. Negative publicity of franchises generated from violating relevant labor laws may have significant negative impact on overall image of franchised brands. However, franchisors should not hold franchisees fully responsible for legal violations in terms of labor management but strive to prevent relevant risks. Thus, the recent amendment in labor law related to increased minimum wage and reduced worktime have called for more attention to effectively implementing the law. Research design, data, and methodology: This study was conducted through a review of franchise-related laws and various institutions and policies. Results: It is further needed for all parties, including franchisors, franchisees, and franchisee employees, to take collaborative actions to improve working conditions of franchisees. Therefore, this study aims to propose appropriate and effective response plans toward recent changes in the Minimum Wage Act, while strengthening sustainability of franchisors, franchisees, and their employees. Conclusions: The proposal mainly contains plans regarding profit-related aids and profit sharing/cost reduction strategies for franchisees, as well as collective bargaining in the franchisor-franchisee relation. More detailed suggestions are included. Conclusions: This proposal may help franchisors and policymakers develop business plans and policies in improving business conditions of franchisees and working conditions of franchisee employees.

Purpose: COVID-19 has negatively influenced the financial performance of restaurant firms. Previous literature suggests that the franchising strategy effectively helps restaurant firms recover from difficult business conditions through various methods for expanding business size and enhancing business efficiency. According to risk-sharing theory, restaurant franchisors may minimize operational risks by sharing the risks with their franchisees. For instance, restaurant franchisors could generate more stable cash flow using franchise fees from their franchisees. However, research on the effect of franchise's risk reduction factor on business performance during pandemic is scarce. Thus, this study aims to examine the positive moderating effect of franchising between COVID-19 and restaurants' financial performance. Research design, data, and methodology: Panel data including financial information and franchising status of restaurant firms were collected for analysis. In order to control for unobserved firm-specific factors, generalized least squared estimation in fixed effects model was conducted. Huber-White robust standard errors were used to deal with heteroscedasticity issues. Results: It was found that COVID-19 pandemic has a negative effect on the restaurants' financial performance such as ROA (return on assets), ROE (return on equity), and PM (profit margins), which confirms the findings from existing literature. More importantly, results show that the degree of franchising has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between COVID-19 and financial performance of restaurant firms. This suggests that more active engagement in franchising may decrease negative impacts of COVID-19 on the restaurants' financial performance. Conclusions: The study supports existing literature related to risk-sharing theory, by confirming that pandemics, such as COVID-19, negatively affect financial performance of the restaurants. Furthermore, it was found that franchising strategy can help lessen negative impacts of pandemics on the firm performance. These findings can contribute to the franchise and restaurant management literature by suggesting the role of franchising in reducing business risks, thereby positively affecting financial performance. Moreover, this study offers business managers of franchisors and franchisees insights for utilizing franchising in restaurant risk management. Policymakers may also gain information on aiding restaurant firms during global crisis, such as COVID-19.