프랜차이즈 가맹본부에 대한 지각된 전환비용이 가맹점의 관계몰입과 관계성과에 미치는 영향

Since Lotteria started domestic franchise industry in 1979, domestic franchise has grown rapidly. Since the Korea’s foreign financial crisis in 1997, the number of small-scale entrepreneurs has surged, and the government has actively fostered the franchise industry, and the franchise industry is growing rapidly every year. In 2014, the domestic franchise industry grew at an annual rate of 6.1% (based on the franchise headquarters). As of 2014, a total of 3,360 franchise headquarters and 197,858 franchisees operate the franchise business. As of 2014, out of the total domestic franchise industry, dinning franchises account for 70%, so the importance of the franchise in the domestic franchise industry is high (Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy 2016). The domestic food service franchise grew to become a center of fast food industry in the early stage of introduction, and as a result of the rapidly changing needs of consumers, a variety of food service franchises have become established in Korea. The domestic franchise industry gradually changed into the corporate type franchise system as the management forms and methods of foreign companies affected the domestic business by the appearance of foreign fast food franchises in the 1980’s. Franchise system is a system in which the affiliate headquarters so-called franchisor allows franchisees to sell their mutual or branded products/services in a certain area for contracted period(Zeidman 1998). The domestic dining franchise industry in the systemized system is growing at a rate of 9.2% per year (based on the growth rate of franchise stores). At the same time, however, competition is intensifying due to the increasing number of new franchise headquarters and franchisees and the participation of big companies in the market. Also, due to the lack of contracts completeness between the franchisor and the franchisees, the industry has a yearly closing rate of 2.12% and a short average participation period of 34.3 months(Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy 2016). However, there are still many problems with the quality of the internal franchise system. A number of franchise studies have conducted research focusing on the support of franchise headquarters’ support and education support at the franchise headquarters as antecedent variables of the franchise's commitment to franchise headquarters for qualitative growth of the franchise system. However, in this study, the authors hypothesize the relationship between the franchisees and the franchise headquarters is a sort of supplier-buyer relationship in which the franchisees continuously purchase the mutual, trademark, and technology of the franchise headquarters over the renewal period. In addition to the support services provided by the headquarters, the authors suggest the perceived switching cost by franchisees influences the multi-dimensional relationship commitment and affect the relationship performance for the franchise industry. As shown in Figure 1, this conceptual framework shows on the effect that the interaction among three components of switching costs such as financial, relational, and procedural switching cost and multi-dimensional commitment(e.g., affective and calculative commitment) on the two different relational performance(e.g., multi-shop running intention and opportunistic behavior intention). The core of this research is that success of franchisee system depends on maintenance of the relationship. To test the proposed research model and hypotheses, data were collected from 150 franchisees in the field of Food & Beverage, convenience store, fast food, and bakery franchise. All the measurement scales in this study come from existing literature with adaptation to fit the purpose of this study except multi-brand shop management intention. We investigate the reliability, content validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity of the proposed instrument by analyzing data. Overall, the results indicated good psychometric properities, and the measurement model revealed and acceptable fit of the model(χ2=310.855, df=231, χ2/df=1.346, RMR=0.036, RMSEA=0.048, GFI=0.855, IFI=0.959, TLI=0.950, CFI=0.958). Composite reliability, or AVE among the set of indicators that measured and underlying construct, are greater than the recommended threshold value of 0.7 for CR and 0.5 for AVE. Thus, the model provides a good fit to the data. Using structural equation model, the author checked the proposed model fit and hypotheses. All of model fit index are acceptable(χ2=347.435, df=261, χ2/df=1.331, RMR=0.044, RMSEA=0.047, GFI=0.846, IFI=0.956, TLI=0.948, CFI=0.955). In order to verify hypothesis 1 through 3, in the study, the difference analysis of χ2 between free and constrained models was verified. The hypothesis 1 implies that the financial switching cost will have a greater effect on the calculative commitment than the affective commitment. In the standardized path coefficient value of <Table 1>, the coefficient of calculative commitment is higher than affective commitment. In the χ2 difference test, the χ2 value of the constraint model was 352.016, df = 262, and △ χ2(1)= 4.581. So hypothesis 1 was supported. Hypothesis 2 implies that relational switching cost will have a greater impact on affective commitment than calculative commitment. The effect of relational switching cost on affective commitment is higher than calculative commitment. The result of χ2 difference test between free and constrained models was conducted and hypothesis 2 was also supported. Hypothesis 3 was that the procedural switching cost had a greater impact on the calculative commitment than the affective commitment, but the hypothesis was not supported. Hypothesis 4 and Hypothesis 5 were not supported as well. Unexpectedly, calculative commitment had a positive (+) effect on opportunistic behavior. Hypothesis 6 implies that affective commitment will have influenced on multi-store operation intention and the hypothesis was supported. Hypothesis 7 was not supported by the hypothesis that calculative commitment have influenced on multi-store operation intention. The franchise shop running operation period set by the control variables did not affect the dependent variable and the opportunistic behavior. Finally, the theoretical and practical implications are suggested based on the results.