Purpose - In recent years, research has been conducted on the conflict resolution strategies of the franchise headquarters and the franchisees, but there is a lack of research on how the power structure and cultural factors play a role in resolving conflicts. From this perspective, this study is to examine the structural relationship between franchisors' cultural orientation and relationship power, and conflict resolution strategies, relationship trust, and relationship performance using. The findings of this study suggest how franchise headquarters should establish long-term relationship with franchisees and share information. Research design, data, methodology - The data were collected from April 1 to April 15, 2013. Because this study examined franchise industries from the franchisee perspective, we contacted franchisee store owner and managers located in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province. Interviewers trained contacted a total of 200 franchisees, and 196 franchisees responded. Out of 196 respondents, 13 respondents were deleted due to missing information. Thus, a total of 183 franchisee were used for this study. he data were analyzed using frequency analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis, and structural equational modeling with SPSS 24.0 and Amos 23.0 statistical program. Results - The results showed that cooperation orientation and relational power of franchisor had significant effects on conflict resolution strategies. Cooperating, obliging, and compromising strategies of conflict resolution strategy had significant effects on relationship trust. Also, relationship trust had significant effect on relationship performance. Conclusions - This study shows that the franchise headquarters and the franchisees share necessary information for common purposes and that continuous two-way communications play an important role in resolving conflicts. In other words, the result of this study suggests that if the franchise headquarters and the franchisee actively consider the position of the other party and strive to achieve the goal, conflict resolution may be more successful. In order to do this, the franchise headquarters will have to consider how to build and maintain continuous communication with the franchisees, and continuous education is also needed so that employees can have a cooperative attitude. However, since the culture of these organizations is not made up of simple staff training and is not formed within a short time, the CEO of the franchisee headquarters should take the lead in establishing a cooperative culture with the merchants over the long term.
As the service robot market grows among the food technology industry, the quality of robot service that affects consumer behavioral intentions in the restaurant industry has become important. Serving robots, which are common in restaurants, reduce employee work through order and delivery, but because they do not respond to service failures, they increase customer dissatisfaction as well as increase employee work. In order to improve the quality of service beyond the simple function of receiving and serving orders, functions of recovery effort, fairness, empathy, responsiveness, and certainty of the process after service failure, such as serving employees, are also required. Accordingly, we assumed the type of failure of restaurant serving service as two internal and external factors, and developed a serving robot with a vocational ethics module to respond with a professional ethical attitude when the restaurant serving service fails. At this time, the expression and action of the serving robot were developed by adding a failure mode reflecting failure recovery efforts and empathy to the normal service mode. And by recruiting college students, we tested whether the service robot's response to two types of service failures had a significant effect on evaluating the robot. Participants responded that they were more uncomfortable with service failures caused by other customers' mistakes than robot mistakes, and that the serving robot's professional ethical empathy and response were appropriate. In addition, unlike the robot's favorability, the evaluation of the safety of the robot had a significant difference depending on whether or not a professional ethical empathy module was installed. A professional ethical empathy response module for natural service failure recovery using generative artificial intelligence should be developed and mounted, and the domestic serving robot industry and market are expected to grow more rapidly if the Korean serving robot certification system is introduced.
As a new type of business model in the market competition situation of tour companies, this study has developed to the online form of the travel industry to the business form which is the combination of the electronic commerce function and the mobile service process in the provision of the simple web-site, This study explores the difficulties of change for the development of the travel industry from the point of view that recognition is not a simple marketing strategy diversification means but a change of recognition as a business model for expanding new markets or creating new markets. The factors affecting the choice of online travel agent (OTA) and the factors that influence the choice of online travel agency were analyzed. Were used for the empirical survey. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors influencing the choice of online travel agents who have experience with or experience using online travel agency (OTA), what factors are important to them, and how they differ in importance when visiting again. The results of this study are as follows: First, there was a significant difference between the first and second visitors of online travel agencies. The results of this study were as follows: Attitude toward resolving complaints, convenience of change and cancellation, delivery of tickets and documents, convenience of complaints, The emphasis should be on establishing and strengthening service environments such as the speed of updating the latest information, the simplicity of the booking procedure, the degree of satisfaction of the past, the ability of employees to handle their work, the safety of various payment methods and settlement, The results of this study are as follows: First, the satisfaction of the online travel agency is influenced by the selection factors of the selected online tour agency, and the A/S such as the convenience of prompt delivery, Environmental factors contributed to satisfaction. It is suggested that the systematic service structure such as customer satisfaction and ease of use is a necessary marketing strategy for survival and development of online travel agencies. It is suggested that the marketing concentration strategy with the first visitors as the target market is effective and this is a part of the marketing strategy for the survival of online travel agencies.
The "flextime" system, which was initially designed to maintain a balance between work and personal life, has recently received much attention as an alternative form of work, enabling employees to fully exert their creativity. Most studies show that the effects of flextime on performance, productivity, attitude toward the organization, absenteeism, and turnover differ between managerial and non-managerial workers. This suggests that workers' personal characteristics affect their preference for flextime by directly or indirectly influencing its result variables. As most Korean companies have not adopted the flextime system, little research has been conducted on it in Korea. Recently, Korean companies have been discussing flextime as one of several measures for enhancing international competitiveness. Therefore, this study aims to offer a theoretical framework for the introduction of the system by analyzing the effects of the precedent factors on the preference for flextime. Though not statistically significant, a higher preference for flextime is noted among workers over the age of 36. Older workers usually are more conservative and less adaptable to change but here the older Korean workers may be anxious and resistant. Additional research on workers in different types of businesses using improved research methods will lead to more meaningful results. Married workers display a lower preference to flextime than single workers. In Korea, the current atmosphere focused on a happy home encourages married workers to prefer regular work hours, enabling them to go to and from work on a regular schedule. This means that normal working hours, from morning to evening, are preferred as it is the most suitable system for families. However, this is not so in the case of single workers. Unmarried singles tend to prefer flextime for investing in self-development toward future prosperity, over the benefits of regular working-hours. Flextime is designed to meet their needs to some extent as it is helpful in maintaining a balance between work life and self-development. If flextime is selected, workers can spend mornings on self-development and work in the afternoons. Therefore, when flextime is introduced in Korea, it would be desirable to start with unmarried workers, to increase corporate creativity and productivity and develop individual potential. In particular, when the five-day workweek, the main concern for companies and labor unions, is adopted, synergy with flextime could be expected and a gradual implementation of flextime will be effective. Gender difference shows similar results to marital status with male workers displaying a higher preference for flextime. It is inferred that male workers' attitudes toward flextime are more favorable than female workers' because flextime enables self-development and work life to coexist. A relatively weak, though statistically significant, correlation exists between control position and flextime preference with inner-control-oriented workers displaying favorable attitudes toward flextime. Generally, inner-control-oriented workers tend to attribute the consequences caused by any person or partner relationship to themselves. Thus, when a new system is introduced they are likely to have less reluctance and fear than outer-control-oriented workers, because they think it is important to deal with the new system. A weak but slight correlation exists between the desire for achievement and flextime preference. People who have a higher desire for achievement are willing to consider the new system, especially if significant success is reasonably expected. This result is derived from a reasonable judgment that flextime offers an individual the time for self-development while the organization benefits from the resulting creativity and performance enhancements. Although not the primary analysis, a high correlation is found between control position and the desire for achievement, which is consistent with the results of previous research. The regression analysis not only supports the preceding ANOVA and correlation analysis but also shows the existence of a causal relationship. Married workers have a weak preference for flextime, which is consistent with the results of the preceding ANOVA. Relative to men, women have a weak preference for flextime. No statistically significant correlation was noticed for age. Inner-control-oriented workers prefer flextime more than outer-control-oriented workers as the former view the consequences of change to be their own responsibility. However, the preference for flextime seems to be weak. As expected, people with a higher desire for achievement have a stronger preference for flextime, presumably because the greater the desire for achievement, the stronger the spirit of challenging an uncertain future. No significant correlation exists between job satisfaction and flextime preference.
The study examines how the environmental factors of store influence service brand personality and repurchase intention in the service environment. The service industry has been experiencing the intensified competition with the industry's continuous growth and the influence from rapid technological advancement. Under the circumstances, it has become ever more important for the brand competitiveness to be distinctively recognized against competition. A brand needs to be distinguished and differentiated from competing companies because they are all engaged in the similar environment of the service industry. The differentiation of brand achievement has become increasingly important to highlight certain brand functions to include emotional, self-expressive, and symbolic functions since the importance of such functions has been further emphasized in promoting consumption activities. That is the recent role of brand personality that has been emphasized in the service industry. In other words, customers now freely and actively express their personalities or egos in consumption activities, taking an important role in construction of a brand asset. Hence, the study suggests that it is necessary to disperse the recognition and acknowledgement that the maintenance of the existing customers contributes more to boost repurchase intention when it is compared to the efforts to create new customers, particularly in the service industry. Meanwhile, the store itself can offer a unique environment that may influence the consumer's purchase decision. Consumers interact with store environments in the process of,virtually, all household purchase they make (Sarel 1981). Thus, store environments may encourage customers to purchase. The roles that store environments play are to provide informational cues to customers about the store and goods and communicate messages to stimulate consumers' emotions. The store environments differentiate the store from competing stores and build a unique service brand personality. However, the existing studies related to brand in the service industry mostly concentrated on the relationship between the quality of service and customer satisfaction, and they are mostly generalized while the connective studies focused on brand personality. Such approaches show limitations and are insufficient to investigate on the relationship between store environment and brand personality in the service industry. Accordingly, the study intends to identify the level of contribution to the establishment of brand personality made by the store's physical environments that influence on the specific brand characteristics depending on the type of service. The study also intends to identify what kind of relationships with brand personality exists with brand personality while being influenced by store environments. In addition, the study intends to make meaningful suggestions to better direct marketing efforts by identifying whether a brand personality makes a positive influence to induce an intention for repurchase. For this study, the service industry is classified into four categories based on to the characteristics of service: experimental-emotional service, emotional -credible service, credible-functional service, and functional-experimental service. The type of business with the most frequent customer contact is determined for each service type and the enterprise with the highest brand value in each service sector based on the report made by the Korea Management Association. They are designated as the representative of each category. The selected representatives are a fast-food store (experimental-emotional service), a cinema house (emotional-credible service), a bank (credible-functional service), and discount store (functional-experimental service). The survey was conducted for the four selected brands to represent each service category among consumers who are experienced users of the designated stores in Seoul Metropolitan City and Gyeonggi province via written questionnaires in order to verify the suggested assumptions in the study. In particular, the survey adopted 15 scales, which represent each characteristic factor, among the 42 unique characteristics developed by Jennifer Aaker(1997) to assess the brand personality of each service brand. SPSS for Windows Release 12.0 and LISREL were used in the analysis of data verification. The methodology of the structural equation model was used for the study and the pivotal findings are as follows. 1) The environmental factors ware classified as design factors, ambient factors, and social factors. Therefore, the validity of measurement scale of Baker et al. (1994) was proved. 2) The service brand personalities were subdivided as sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness, which makes the use of the brand personality scales by Jennifer Aaker(1997) appropriate in the service industry as well. 3) One-way ANOVA analysis on the scales of store environment and service brand personality showed that there exist statistically significant differences in each service category. For example, the social factors were highest in discount stores, while the ambient factors and design factors were highest in fast-food stores. The discount stores were highest in the sincerity and excitement, while the highest point for banks was in the competence and ruggedness, and the highest point for fast-food stores was in the sophistication, The consumers will make a different respond to the physical environment of stores and service brand personality that are inherent to the corresponding service interface. Hence, the customers will make a different decision-making when dealing with different service categories. In this aspect, the relationships of variables in the proposed hypothesis appear to work in a different way depending on the exposed service category. 4) The store environment factors influenced on service brand personalities differently by category of service. The factors of store's physical environment are transferred to a brand and were verified to strengthen service brand personalities. In particular, the level of influence on the service brand personality by physical environment differs depending on service category or dimension, which indicates that there is a need to apply a different style of management to a different service category or dimension. It signifies that there needs to be a brand strategy established in order to positively influence the relationship with consumers by utilizing an appropriate brand personality factor depending on different characteristics by service category or dimension. 5) The service brand personalities influenced on the repurchase intention. Especially, the largest influence was made in the sophistication dimension of service brand personality scale; the unique and characteristically appropriate arrangement of physical environment will make customers stay in the service environment for a long time and will lead to give a positive influence on the repurchase intention. 6) The store environment factors influenced on the repurchase intention. Particularly, the largest influence was made on the social factors of store environment. The most intriguing finding is that the service factor among all other environment factors gives the biggest influence to the repurchase intention in most of all service types except fast-food stores. Such result indicates that the customers pay attention to how much the employees try to provide a quality service when they make an evaluation on the service brand. At the same time, it also indicates that the personal factor is directly transmitted to the construction of brand personality. The employees' attitude and behavior are the determinants to establish a service brand personality in the process of enhancing service interface. Hence, there should be a reinforced search for a method to efficiently manage the service staff who has a direct contact with customers in order to make an affirmative improvement of the customers' brand evaluation at the service interface. The findings suggest several managerial implications. 1) Results from the empirical study indicated that store environment factors have a strong positive impact on a service brand personality. To increase customers' repurchase intention of a service brand, the management is required to effectively manage store environment factors and create a friendly brand personality based on the corresponding service environment. 2) Mangers and researchers must understand and recognize that the store environment elements are important marketing tools, and that brand personality influences on consumers' repurchase intention. Based on such result of the study, a service brand could be utilized as an efficient measure to achieve a differentiation by enforcing the elements that are most influential among all other store environments for each service category. Therefore, brand personality established involving various store environments will further reinforce the relationship with customers through the elevated brand identification of which utilization to induce repurchase decision can be used as an entry barrier. 3) The study identified the store environment as a component of service brand personality for the store's effective communication with consumers. For this, all communication channels should be maintained with consistency and an integrated marketing communication should be executed to efficiently approach to a larger number of customers. Mangers and researchers must find strategies for aligning decisions about store environment elements with the retailers' marketing and store personality objectives. All ambient, design, and social factors need to be orchestrated so that consumers can take an appropriate store personality. In this study, the induced results from the previous studies were extended to the service industry so as to identify the customers' decision making process that leads to repurchase intention and a result similar to those of the previous studies. The findings suggested several theoretical and managerial implications. However, the situation that only one service brand served as the subject of analysis for each service category, and the situation that correlations among store environment elements were not identified, as well as the problem of representation in selection of samples should be considered and supplemented in the future when further studies are conducted. In addition, various antecedents and consequences of brand personality must be looked at in the aspect of the service environment for further research.
Franchise businesses in South Korea have contributed to economic growth and job creation, and its growth potential remains very high. However, despite such virtues, domestic franchise businesses face many problems such as the instability of franchisor's business structure and weak financial conditions. To solve these problems, the government enacted legislation and strengthened franchise related laws. However, the strengthening of laws regulating franchisors had many side effects that interrupted the development of the franchise business. For example, legal regulations regarding franchisors have had the effect of suppressing the franchisor's leadership activities (e.g. activities such as the ability to advocate the franchisor's policies and strategies to the franchisees, in order to facilitate change and innovation). One of the main goals of the franchise business is to build cooperation between the franchisor and the franchisee for their combined success. However, franchisees can refuse to follow the franchisor's strategies because of the current state of franchise-related law and government policy. The purpose of this study to explore the effects of franchisor's leadership style on franchisee's commitment in a franchise system. We classified leadership styles according to the path-goal theory (House & Mitchell, 1974), and it was hypothesized and tested that the four leadership styles proposed by the path-goal theory (i.e. directive, supportive, participative and achievement-oriented leadership) have different effects on franchisee's commitment. Another purpose of this study to explore the how the level of franchisee's self-efficacy influences both the franchisor's leadership style and franchisee's commitment in a franchise system. Results of the present study are expected to provide important theoretical and practical implications as to the role of franchisor's leadership style, as restricted by government regulations and the franchisee's self-efficacy, which could be needed to improve the quality of the long-term relationship between the franchisor and franchisee. Quoted by Northouse(2007), one problem regarding the investigation of leadership is that there are almost as many different definitions of leadership as there are people who have tried to define it. But despite the multitude of ways in which leadership has been conceptualized, the following components can be identified as central to the phenomenon: (a) leadership is a process, (b) leadership involves influence, (c) leadership occurs in a group context, and (d) leadership involves goal attainment. Based on these components, in this study leadership is defined as a process whereby franchisor's influences a group of franchisee' to achieve a common goal. Focusing on this definition, the path-goal theory is about how leaders motivate subordinates to accomplish designated goals. Drawing heavily from research on what motivates employees, path-goal theory first appeared in the leadership literature in the early 1970s in the works of Evans (1970), House (1971), House and Dessler (1974), and House and Mitchell (1974). The stated goal of this leadership theory is to enhance employee performance and employee satisfaction by focusing on employee motivation. In brief, path-goal theory is designed to explain how leaders can help subordinates along the path to their goals by selecting specific behaviors that are best suited to subordinates' needs and to the situation in which subordinates are working (Northouse, 2007). House & Mitchell(1974) predicted that although many different leadership behaviors could have been selected to be a part of path-goal theory, this approach has so far examined directive, supportive, participative, and achievement-oriented leadership behaviors. And they suggested that leaders may exhibit any or all of these four styles with various subordinates and in different situations. However, due to restrictive government regulations, franchisors are not in a position to change their leadership style to suit their circumstances. In addition, quoted by Northouse(2007), ssubordinate characteristics determine how a leader's behavior is interpreted by subordinates in a given work context. Many researchers have focused on subordinates' needs for affiliation, preferences for structure, desires for control, and self-perceived level of task ability. In this study, we have focused on the self-perceived level of task ability, namely, the franchisee's self-efficacy. According to Bandura (1977), self-efficacy is chiefly defined as the personal attitude of one's ability to accomplish concrete tasks. Therefore, it is not an indicator of one's actual abilities, but an opinion of the extent of how one can use that ability. Thus, the judgment of maintain franchisee's commitment depends on the situation (e.g., government regulation and policy and leadership style of franchisor) and how it affects one's ability to mobilize resources to deal with the task, so even if people possess the same ability, there may be differences in self-efficacy. Figure 1 illustrates the model investigated in this study. In this model, it was hypothesized that leadership styles would affect the franchisee's commitment, and self-efficacy would moderate the relationship between leadership style and franchisee's commitment. Theoretically, quoted by Northouse(2007), the path-goal approach suggests that leaders need to choose a leadership style that best fits the needs of subordinates and the work they are doing. According to House & Mitchell (1974), the theory predicts that a directive style of leadership is best in situations in which subordinates are dogmatic and authoritarian, the task demands are ambiguous, and the organizational rule and procedures are unclear. In these situations, franchisor's directive leadership complements the work by providing guidance and psychological structure for franchisees. For work that is structured, unsatisfying, or frustrating, path-goal theory suggests that leaders should use a supportive style. Franchisor's Supportive leadership offers a sense of human touch for franchisees engaged in mundane, mechanized activity. Franchisor's participative leadership is considered best when a task is ambiguous because participation gives greater clarity to how certain paths lead to certain goals; it helps subordinates learn what actions leads to what outcome. Furthermore, House & Mitchell(1974) predicts that achievement-oriented leadership is most effective in settings in which subordinates are required to perform ambiguous tasks. Marsh and O'Neill (1984) tested the idea that organizational members' anger and decline in performance is caused by deficiencies in their level of effort and found that self-efficacy promotes accomplishment, decreases stress and negative consequences like depression and emotional instability. Based on the extant empirical findings and theoretical reasoning, we posit positive and strong relationships between the franchisor's leadership styles and the franchisee's commitment. Furthermore, the level of franchisee's self-efficacy was thought to maintain their commitment. The questionnaires sent to participants consisted of the following measures; leadership style was assessed using a 20 item 7-point likert scale developed by Indvik (1985), self-efficacy was assessed using a 24 item 6-point likert scale developed by Bandura (1977), and commitment was assessed using a 6 item 5-point likert scale developed by Morgan & Hunt (1994). Questionnaires were distributed to Korean optical franchisees in Seoul. It took about 20 days to complete the data collection. A total number of 140 questionnaires were returned and complete data were available from 137 respondents. Results of multiple regression analyses testing the relationships between the each of the four styles of leadership shown by the franchisor as independent variables and franchisee's commitment as the dependent variable showed that the relationship between supportive leadership style and commitment (