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

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.71-99
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• 2010

Most of studies on patriotism in the marketing area have focused on ethnocentric tendencies observed in consumption behaviors. On the contrary, there have been few empirical studies on how patriotism in the general sense, indicating affection for, attachment to, and pride in the country, influences consumers' evaluation of domestic and foreign products. Given the current situation that marketing activities appealing to people's patriotism is increasing, this is somewhat surprising. Thus, this study examined empirically how patriotism influences people's evaluation of domestic and foreign products. In addition, we tested whether consumer ethnocentrism works as an intervening variable in the relation between patriotism and product evaluation. The empirical analysis was conducted through a questionnaire survey of undergraduate and graduate students at universities in Seoul. The survey asked about the respondents' patriotism, consumer ethnocentrism, domestic product evaluation, foreign product evaluation, and demographical characteristics. In foreign product evaluation, the respondents were requested to evaluate Chinese and Japanese products. Email was used to send and recover the questionnaires, and 135 replies were used in the analysis. Major findings from the empirical analysis are as follows. First, a significant relationship was observed between patriotism and domestic product evaluation. That is, patriotic participants evaluated domestic products more favorably. On the other hand, no significant relationship was observed between patriotism and foreign product evaluation(See Table 1-1 and 1-2). Next, the effect of patriotism on domestic product evaluation was mediated by consumer ethnocentrism. However, whether the effect of patriotism on domestic product evaluation is mediated by consumer ethnocentrism partially or fully was different according to product(See Table 2-1 and 2-2). Lastly, we tried to analyze the relation between consumer ethnocentrism and product evaluation and comparing the results with findings of previous researches. According to the results, a significant relationship was observed between consumer ethnocentrism and domestic product evaluation but not between consumer ethnocentrism and foreign product evaluation. The meanings of this study are as follows. First, there have been few marketing studies that investigated the relation between patriotism and product evaluation. Thus, this study is meaningful in that it supplemented the limitation of previous research. Second, consumer ethnocentrism was found to mediate the relation between patriotism and domestic product evaluation. Considering the absence of previous research that examined the role of consumer ethnocentrism as an intervening variable, this study is significant in that it expanded the scope of research on consumer ethnocentrism. Third, from the practical aspect, the results of this study suggest that marketing appealing to patriotism is effective in stimulating consumers' purchase and consumption of domestic products. Accordingly, such a marketing strategy is expected to be effective in protecting domestic markets from imported goods and overseas brands and to increase demands for domestic products and brands. However, there is the question of whether the effect of patriotism based marketing strategies in promoting demand for domestic products would persist. That is, this study could not find a significant relation between patriotism and foreign product evaluation, and this means that the increase in patriotism for the home country does not damage people's view to the quality of foreign products negatively. Accordingly, without change in people's perception of foreign products, it is highly likely that the increase in demand for domestic products or brands induced by patriotism elevated at a specific time or situation may not last long. Fourth, the results of this study suggest that the patriotism level may influence consumers' choice behavior toward retailers strongly connected to a specific country or region. That is, consumers with high level patriotism may hesitate or avoid using a retailer associated with some foreign country. Fifth, according to the results of this study, when people's patriotism is stimulated by a specific social situation or event, it can be an opportunity for domestic franchise brands to increase their market performance such as sales and market share and, at the same time, for foreign franchise brands to experience adversities. Therefore, during a period like the Olympic Games or the World Cup when people's sense of belonging or attachment to their country is heightened, domestic franchise brands need to make marketing activities that may lead market opportunities to substantial results and foreign franchise brands to cope with such adversities. Sixth, consumers' brand choice is often made in retail stores. It has been demonstrated by numerous studies that in store stimuli such as point of purchase display can affect consumers' behavior. Considering this, domestic brands facing competition with foreign brands should make continuous efforts to enhance the market performance of their products through developing in store stimuli that can stimulate consumers' patriotism. Finally, based on the major findings of this study, both academic and practical issues were discussed. Suggestions for future studies were provided.